Provenance

• 1903: bought from Gaston Bernheim-Jeune (1870-1953), Rue Lafitte, Paris, by Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936);
• 1918: transferred to the First Museum of Modern Western Art (State Museum of New Western Art), Moscow;
• 1931: transferred to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

S. I. Shchukin owned three paintings by Whistler, this painting, The Sea Coast [YMSM 274], and The Blue Sea [YMSM 380]. His collection was nationalised by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov alias Lenin (1870-1924) in 1918, when this painting was acquired by the Museum of Modern Western Art, Moscow. It was transferred to the State Hermitage Museum thirty years later.

Exhibitions

It is likely that these paintings were exhibited in Paris but the original titles and exhibitions are not known.