The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay probably dates from the late 1890s.

Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay, National Gallery of Art

The Pennells suggest a date of about 1896: this fits with the technique but the butterfly signature suggests a slightly later date. ¹

Images

Subject

Titles

Two possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Portrait' (1912, National Gallery of British Art). ²
• 'Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay' (1980, YMSM). ³
• 'Alexander Arnold Hannay' (2015, National Gallery of Art).

The full 1980 title is preferred, 'Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay'.

Description

Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay, National Gallery of Art

A small full-length portrait of a man, in vertical format. He has slightly curly dark hair and a neat curving moustache. He wears a black coat, black trousers, and a neatly tied black cravat over a white shirt. He stands near the corner of a room (the corner is behind him, to left) on a greenish-grey floor against a pinkish-beige wall. The light comes from the left and a shadow falls on the wall to right.

Sitter

Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927) was born in Dundee on 26 January 1858, the son of Alexander Hannay and Mary Agnes Hawson. He married Alice Mary (b. 1866) in 1888. Their children were Margaret Alice, born in 1888, Alexander H. Hannay in 1890 and Katharine in 1895. A. A. Hannay was a solicitor; he died in September 1927.

Hannay was buying from Whistler directly (or through the Company of the Butterfly) probably from late 1896 and certainly between 1900-1901. At that time he was living at 17 Sackville Street, St James's, London. He owned a number of works by Whistler, including Nocturne: Westminster - Grey and Gold y144, Cremorne Gardens, No. 2 y164, The Little White Sofa y258, The Shop Window y377, Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec y382, and two late works, The Sea, Pourville, No. 1 y516 and The Sea, Pourville, No. 2 y519.

Technique

Technique

Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay, National Gallery of Art

It was painted on a chamfered reddish-wood panel. It is mostly thinly painted, with considerable signs of revisions, rubbing down and repainting, particularly around the head and hands. The pale grey underpaint is visible in several areas, such as around the skirting and the wall.

Conservation History

Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay, photograph, 1980

Numerous cracks in the paint, suggesting it was overworked by the artist, date from before 1980.

Frame

Size: 45.9 x 37.8 x 7 cm (18 1/16 x 14 7/8 x 2 ¾").

History

Provenance

• 1896/1902: bought by the sitter, Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927), London, who owned it until at least 1912, and possibly until his death in 1927.
• 1929: sold by the Chester H. Johnson Gallery, Chicago, to Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971), Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, May 1929;
• 1943: Rosenwald gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 473), plate 306, as 'Portrait of Alexander Arnold Hannay'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, p. 172.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970, p. 122, repr., as 'Arnold Hannay'.
• American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980, p. 258, repr., as 'Arnold Hannay'.
• American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992, p. 381, repr.
• Torchia, Robert Wilson, with Deborah Chotner and Ellen G. Miles, American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue, Washington, DC, 1998, pp. 255-56, repr.

EXHIBITION:

• Loan Collection of the Works by James McNeill Whistler, National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Gallery), London, 1912 (cat. no. 13), as 'Portrait', lent anonymously.
• Etchings, lithographs, original drawings, and autograph letters by James A. McNeill Whistler, 1834-1903: lent by Lessing J. Rosenwald, Esq, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1931 (leaflet, no. cat. no.).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• National Gallery of Art website at http://www.nga.gov.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 221).

Other

• None.