Provenance

• 1875/1878?: acquired by Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890), London;
• 1890: after Howell's death, auctioned at Christie's, London, 13 November 1890 (lot 433) as 'The Princess', and bought by Messrs Dowdeswell, London dealers;
• 1891: sold by Dowdeswell's to Elbert Jan van Wisselingh (1848-1912), art dealer in The Hague and at the Dutch Gallery, London;
• 1893: sold by Van Wisselingh to Prof. Frederick Brown (1851-1941) of the Slade School of Art, London;
• 1899: sold by Brown through David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) of the Goupil Gallery, London, to Agnew's, London dealers, 27 May 1899;
• 1899: sold by Agnew's to Alexander Young (1828–1907), London, on 29 May 1899;
• after 1902: sold by Young to Boussod, Valadon & Cie.
• 1902/1918: various art dealers.
• 1918: Sent by Durand-Ruel, New York art dealers, to the Macbeth Galleries, New York, 30 April-25 May 1918;
• 1919: sold by the Howard Young Galleries, New York, to a New York collector.
• 1919/1933: acquired by Theodore T. Ellis (1887-1934) of Worcester, MA;
• 1934: after his death on 6 January 1934, and litigation regarding his will in 1935, passed to his widow, Mary Murphy Griffin (Mrs T. T. Ellis) (d. 1940);
• 1940: Mary G. Ellis bequeathed the picture to the Worcester Art Museum.

It is not known when it was acquired by Charles Augustus Howell, but it was auctioned at Christie's after Howell's death and bought by Messrs Dowdeswell for £5.10.0. According to a photograph in the Witt Library, Dowdeswell's sold it in 1891 to the Dutch art dealer E. J. van Wisselingh, who sold it to Professor Frederick Brown in 1893. 1

Much of the early provenance is given in the American Art News, according to which, it was sold by Brown through D. C. Thomson of the Goupil Gallery, London, to Agnew's on 27 May 1899. 2 It was then sold to Alexander Young in May 1899, and was seen by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) of Detroit in Young's collection in 1902. 3 Boussod, Valadon & Cie bought it from Young. 4 Then – again according to the American Art News – it passed through the hands of various dealers including Durand-Ruel (in 1918), and the Macbeth Galleries (in April-May 1918), and, in the following year, the Howard Young Galleries sold it to a New York collector for $50,000. 5 It was finally owned by the publishers of the Worcester Telegram and the Evening Gazette, Theodore T. Ellis, and his wife Mary G. Ellis. She inherited the painting after his death, and after the settlement of complications arising from his will, and bequeathed it to the Worcester Art Museum in 1940. 6

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.