The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples was painted from at intervals from 1898 until 1901.

1898: It was started in Paris at the end of January 1898. Whistler wrote to William Heinemann (1863-1920) that 'Phryne' had been admired by the sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies (1863-1937):

'[T]he beautiful condition of work is at last quite laughable ... I sit in the studio and could almost laugh at the extraordinary progress I am making and the lovely things I am inventing! - I have now in the studio a Phryne - a Dannae - an Eve - an Odalisque - and a Bathsheba - that carried out ou[gh]t to bring in two or three thousand apiece! - MacMonnies says he has never seen anything like the Phryne - which I am going to do large - after completing the little one - which by the way will make two - so that I see excellent business if I can only hold on!... All these inventions are since you left me the other day!' ¹

1899: Whistler intended to send it to the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in May but did not do so. ² Instead he continued to work on it.

1901: It was shown at the ISSPG (cat. no. 37) and returned after the exhibition to Whistler. In August he mentioned to his Massières at the Académie Carmen that, despite problems with the proprietor Carmen Rossi (b. ca 1878, 'we would no more harm [her] than we would destroy the Phryne'. ³ He continued to work, despite difficulties, on the portrait in September 1901, telling his sister-in-law, 'I think this once I will stay over & work a bit tomorrow on the Phryne - Things are perhaps not quite so bad after all.' ⁴ In October, Inez Eleanor Addams (1874-1958), the Massière of the women's class at the Académie Carmen, sent Whistler some flowers, and he thanked her: 'I have to thank you for the beautiful offering from Inez to Phryne! ... the thought was graceful as the flowers were exquisite!' ⁵

1902: It was again exhibited, this time in the Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1194). It was sold by Whistler to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) in June 1902, but it was still in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903. ⁶

Images

Subject

Titles

Minor variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Purple & Gold – 'Phryne the Superbe! – Builder of Temples' 1899, Whistler). ⁷
• 'Purple and Gold – Phryne the Superb ! – Builder of Temples' (1901, ISSPG). ⁸
• 'Phryne' (1899, 1902, Whistler). ⁹
• 'Pourpre et Or – Phryne la Superbe, qui batit des Temples.' (1902?, Whistler or R. Birnie Philip). ¹⁰
• 'Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb ! – Builder of Temples' (1980, YMSM). ¹¹

It was admired by the American-born Symbolist poet Francis Vielé-Griffin (1864-1937), whom Whistler had met by 1893. ¹² It is possible that it was Vielé-Griffin, or another poet in the same circle, such as Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), who suggested the title.

'Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples' is the preferred title.

Description

Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples, Freer Gallery of Art

A full-length study of a nude woman, in vertical format. She stands slightly turned to her left, her arms at her sides, holding a robe behind her. She wears a Phrygian-style cap. Behind her is a purple curtain, and at right, a pillar supporting a balustrade, over the entrance to a garden. There are roughly indicated pots behind her on each side.

Sitter

Whistler's model has not been identified.

The courtesan Phryne, the mistress of Praxiteles, offered to rebuild Thebes at her own expense after its destruction by Alexander.

The Freer Gallery of Art website commented:

'As recorded by several Greek commentators, Phryne was both a rich woman - a "Builder of Temples" - and an artist's model. Indeed, she was the archetypal female model: the woman who posed for the first monumental female nude in the history of Western art, the Aphrodite of Cnidus by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles. Praxiteles obscured the identity of his model (and mistress) by representing her as a goddess. Whistler brings the history of the female nude full circle by undoing this mystification. Ignoring the idealized marble goddess within the temple, he gives us the flesh-and-blood model in the artist's studio.' ¹³

Comments

After Whistler showed this painting to him, Lucas (Luke) Alexander Ionides (1837-1924) described it as 'a small picture of Phryne, with her hand extended on an altar', and he accused Whistler of deriving the idea from a tanagra statuette in the British Museum; Whistler was amused and asked Luke to show him the statuette. ¹⁴

Technique

Composition

Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples, Freer Gallery of Art

In the letter of 1898 to William Heinemann Whistler wrote: 'I now have in my studio a Phryne ... MacMonnies says he never has seen anything like the Phryne - which I am going to do large - after completing the little one.' ¹⁵ There is no record of Whistler ever carrying out his intention of painting a large version of this painting, and indeed he asked Pennell:

'Would she [Phryne] be more superb - more truly the Builder of Temples - had I painted her what is called life-size by the foolish critics who always bring out their foot-rule ? Is it a question of feet and inches when you look at her?' ¹⁶

Technique

The composition was drawn first in pencil or crayon on the pale grey underpaint. The lines are visible around the legs, and the structure of the interior and furnishings. Some areas around the edge of the picture are almost bare of paint, but most have been painted over in several layers. The head, for instance, though carefully painted with a small brush, has a dense, over-worked look.

Conservation History

It was repainted so often that the surface paint has suffered considerably in some areas, particularly on and around the figure.

At the Freer Gallery of Art, it was repaired, cleaned and resurface in 1930, and again resurfaced in 1952-1953.

Frame

Purple and Gold: Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples, Freer Gallery of Art

Grau-style frame dating from ca 1901. ¹⁷

History

Provenance

• 1902: bought from Whistler by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was sold by Whistler to Freer in May 1902 for 800 guineas (£840) according to the records of the Company of the Butterfly, Whistler's short-lived and inefficient business outlet. ¹⁸ Miss Birnie Philip kept a note of Freer's purchases and recorded 'Phryne' as sold for £420.0.0 but this appears to he wrong: another account gives the price as 600 guineas, and Freer is recorded as paying Whistler 600 guineas in June 1902. ¹⁹

The portrait was still in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903 and lent by his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) to an exhibition in Venice before it was sent to Freer.

Exhibitions

• 1901: 3rd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Galleries of the Royal Institute, London, 1901 (cat. no. 37) as 'Purple and Gold – Phryne the Superb ! – Builder of Temples'.
• 1902: Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1194).
• 1903: V Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice, 1903 (cat. no. 39).

Plan of a panel of pictures for the ISSPG, Tate Archive, London

Paintings at the ISSPG, Glasgow University Library

Whistler intended to send it to the 2nd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London, 1899, and sketched possible arrangements of his pictures for John Lavery (1856-1941), but in the end he did not send it. ²⁰

Instead he sent it to the third ISSPG exhibition in 1901 where The Athenaeum called it 'delightful and capricious'. ²¹ The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on 7 October grouped this with Gold and Orange: The Neighbours y423 as 'pictures of exceptional beauty and striking for their colour arrangements'. Employing similar wording, the Globe praised it as a 'small picture with exceptional beauty of colour arrangement, and with considerable dignity of style.' ²² At the same time, Truth, while praising the painting, queried the classical title:

'In this study of the nude we have quietness of colour and lowness of tone in a marked degree. That such a Phryne would have disarmed her judges by the simple process of disrobing herself I am not quite convinced. This particular one is just a little bit too massive, perhaps.' ²³

The London Daily News of 12 October had similar reservations: 'A nude, scarcely embodying the title, Phryne, the Superb, has fine passages of colour, with that dull curtain that is a foil the luminous flesh.'

After this it travelled to the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1902, and again, Whistler roughly sketched out his preferred arrangement of his works, in Panel of five paintings m1706. ²⁴ According to the Western Mail, the 'delightful little Phryne' was 'a veritable chef d'oeuvre' and 'the centre of a group of admirers' in the Paris exhibition. ²⁵

According to the terms of Freer's gift to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent.

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. 490), plate 316.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 3rd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Galleries of the Royal Institute, London, 1901 (cat. no. 37) as 'Purple and Gold – Phryne the Superb! – Builder of Temples'.
• Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1194).
• V Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice, 1903 (cat. no. 39).
• 78th Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (cat. no. 328).
• The Inaugural Loan Collection of Paintings, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, 1905 (cat. no. 165).

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'The International Society', Globe, London, 10 October 1901, p. 6. '
• Anon., 'Royal Institute Galleries', London Daily News, London, 12 October 1901, p. 6.
• Anon., 'The International Society', London Evening Standard, London, 10 October 1901, p. 2.
• Anon., Truth, London, 10 October 1901, p. 43.
• Anon., 'Pictures of the New Salon', Cheltenham Looker-On, Cheltenham, 26 April 1902, pp. 11-12.
• Anon., 'Our Paris Letter. Paintings and Sculpture', Western Mail, Glamorgan, 17 May 1902, p. 8.

Journals 1855-1905

• 'To the Editor of the Morning Post', Morning Post, London, 7 October 1901, p. 6.
• Anon, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, Leeds, 7 October 1901, p. 4.
• 'Fine Arts. The International Society's Exhibition', The Athenaeum, London, 2 November 1901, pp. 601-02 at p. 601.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 491), p. 228.
• Merrill, Linda, With Kindest Regards. The Correspondence of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler, 1890-1903, Washington, DC, and London, 1995, p. 215.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 205-06.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, pp. 217, 243, repr. f.p. 218.
• Sutton, Denys, Nocturne: The Art of James McNeill Whistler, London, 1963, p. 133.
• Sutton, Denys, James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels and Watercolours, London, 1966, repr. pl. 115.
• Walker, John, James McNeill Whistler, New York, 1987, p. 138.

Books, General

• Hook, Bailly Van, Angels of Art: Women and Art in American Society, 1876-1914, 1997, Penn State University Press.
• Lawton, Thomas, Freer: a Legacy of Art, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 50, fig. 35.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 153, 296, pl. 62.
• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 14 (02.115).

EXHIBITION:

• Selection of Art Objects from The Freer Collection, National Museum, Washington, DC, 1912 (cat. no. 9).

Journals 1906-Present

• Hobbs, Susan, 'A Connoisseur's Vision: The American Collection of Charles Lang Freer', American Art Review, vol. 4, August 1977, pp. 76-101, at p. 96.
• Ionides, Luke, 'Memories: Whistler in the Quartier Latin', Transatlantic Review, vol. 1, January 1924, pp. 37-52, at p. 51.
• James McNeill Whistler in Context: Essays from the Whistler Centenary Symposium, University of Glasgow, 2003, vol. 2, Washington, 2008, p. 22, fig. 2.2.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1902.115a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 268).

Other

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.