Provenance

• 1896/1899: bought by Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927), London.
• 1921: with W. B. Paterson, London dealer;
• 1922: sold through Scott & Fowles, New York dealers, to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939), New Orleans;
• 1939: bequeathed by him to Tulane University, New Orleans;
• 1941: sold through the Macdonald Gallery, New York, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York, April 1941;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to Harvard University in 1943.

It was probably one of the paintings sold by Whistler in 1896 when he wrote to Ernest George Brown (1851-1915) of The Fine Art Society, London, when he wrote, 'those two particular little pictures are gone - I mean the girl on the sofa.' 1 Alternatively it may have been exhibited as 'Resting' with the Goupil Gallery in 1898.

It was certainly owned by A. A. Hannay by 1899, when he lent it to A Loan Collection of Modern Paintings in Dublin (cat. no. 81, the lender's name being given incorrectly as 'A. N. Hannay'). He also lent it to the Whistler Memorial Exhibitions in London and Paris in 1905.

Exhibitions

• 1898: Possibly A Collection of Selected Works by Painters of the English, French & Dutch Schools, Goupil Gallery, London, 1898 (cat. no. 23) as 'Resting' (see Resting [YMSM 497]).
• 1899: A Loan Collection of Modern Paintings, Leinster Hall, Dublin, 1899 (cat. no. 81) as 'A Girl'.
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 98) as 'The Little White Sofa'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 53) as 'Le petit sopha blanc. – The Little White Sofa'.

A Dublin newspaper commented in 1899, possibly on this painting, 'The little girl ... is, of course, enchanting, in colour, pose, painting—everything'. 2 However, since Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander [YMSM 129] was in the same exhibition, it is more likely to have been the favoured work.