The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players dates from between 1898 and 1899. ¹

Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players, The Hunterian

M. Dornac, Whistler at 86 rue Notre Dame des Champs, photograph, 1890s, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated from the technique, as well as Whistler's known employment of the models, Gladys Winifred Carrington (1889-1940) and Eva Victoria Carrington (1887-1979), and the style of the sofa, which appears in other pictures and photographs (including Dornac's photograph of Whistler's studio in Paris, reproduced above).

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested, with minor punctuation changes:

• 'Flesh Colour and Silver. The Card Players' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ²
• 'Flesh Colour and Silver – The Card Players' (1936, University of Glasgow). ³
• 'Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players' (1908, YMSM). ⁴

For consistency with other entries, 'Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players' is the preferred title.

Description

Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players, The Hunterian

A figure study in horizontal format. Two girls, clad only in head scarves or caps, sit facing each other on a long straight-backed sofa, playing cards. Their bodies are at right angles to the viewer and their pose is rather uncomfortable: the girl on the right, facing left, has her right foot hooked under her left knee, but the other girl (facing right) has both feet awkwardly positioned on the ground. The background is a dingy yellow ochre, the white sofa appears mostly grey.

Sitter

Rita Martin, Gladys Carrington, bromide postcard print, 1900s, National Portrait Gallery x131493

Bassano Ltd, Eva Carrington, Lady de Clifford, later Mrs Tate, 1913, National Portrait Gallery x80113

Bassano Ltd, Eva Carrington, Lady de Clifford, later Mrs Tate, 1913, National Portrait Gallery x80110

Bassano Ltd, Eva Carrington, Lady de Clifford, later Mrs Tate, 1913, National Portrait Gallery x80111

The models for the figures in this painting were Gladys Winifred Carrington (1889-1940) and Eva Victoria Carrington (1887-1979), two sisters who regularly sat for Whistler. They also appear in a number of his pastels, including Two nudes seated on a sofa, one with a cap and fan m1531. Later photographs of Eva, Lady de Clifford, later Mrs Arthur Stock, and Mrs George V. Tate, are reproduced above.

Comments

The Fortune Teller, The Hunterian

The subject of card-playing also appears on the recto of a pastel, r.: The Fortune Teller; v.: A nude lying on a sofa m1274, dating from the early 1890s. The subject is associated with symbols of fate and fortune.

Technique

Composition

Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players, The Hunterian

The lines of the sofa go right through the right-hand figure. It looks as if the left-hand figure was originally painted on her own, a little further to the left, with drapery falling from the seat below the sofa to her right.

Technique

It was painted thinly on a single piece of mahogany-type panel. The commercial pre-primed panel has mid-grey priming applied with pronounced horizontal brushstrokes, parallel to the long edges. The paint does not cover the priming fully. ⁵

The composition, both figures and sofa, is sketched out roughly in a crayon-like material but the oil painting is barely started. The unfinished state of this work shows Whistler's working methods at this late period in his career: the composition has been sketched onto the prepared panel and the oil paint applied to the left hand figure only. One head is well finished, but most other areas have only a single layer of paint.

The crazing in the varnish suggests egg white was applied. This was recommended as a temporary varnish for use on very new paint, but it becomes very insoluble when left in place. ⁶

Conservation History

There is some craquelure and fine drying cracks. The thick natural resin varnish applied over the earlier varnish is a little uneven and yellowed. However the panel is basically in sound condition. ⁷

The panel has a framing device of a backing panel of mahogany-type timber, with narrow (3-4 mm wide) battens adhered at the sides. ⁸ This may have been done in preparation for the 1905 exhibition. The frame has damaged the edges of the panel, revealing the grey priming.

Frame

37.9 x 48.9 x 6.7 cm. The frame has the label of the firm of Andre Chenue (fl. 1890s), packers and shipping agents, Paris, pasted on the back, probably from the time of the Paris exhibition of 1905.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death, and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1935: given by Miss R. Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow.

Exhibitions

• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 51) as ' "Flesh Colour and Silver. The Card Players", unfinished'

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime. It was first shown in the Paris Memorial exhibition of 1905.

By the terms of Miss Birnie Philip's gift, the painting can not 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. 496), plate 320, as 'Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players'.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995, p. 553.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 51) as ' "Flesh Colour and Silver. The Card Players", unfinished'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

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, p. 191 (cat. no. 211).
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 170 (cat. no. 144).

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• James McNeill Whistler, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 1936 (cat. no. 9).
• Getscher, Robert H., 'Whistler's Puritanical Nudes', in Zelman, Anita, and Angela De Tolla-Smyth, A Symposium Window on Whistler's World, Held in Conjunction with Drawing Near: Whistler Etchings from the Zelman Collection, 15 September 1984, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Graphic Arts Council; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, American Art Council, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 97 (not exhibited).
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Whistler Pastels and Related Works in the Hunterian Art Gallery, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, 1984, pp. 7, 53 (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41159.
• Art UK website at https://www.artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 271).

Other

• None.