Provenance

• Date unknown: acquired by the artist Jacques Émile Blanche (1861-1942);
• 1942: probably bequeathed to his adopted son and heir Georges A. Mevil-Blanche (1902-1975), Offranville and Paris.
• 1969: sold by the Leicester Galleries, London, to the New York art dealer, John Archie Torson (d. 2015);
• 1972: sold by him to Herbert E. Ward (1915-2003), proprietor of the Black Bass Hotel, Lumberville, PA.
• 2018: present whereabouts unknown.

The portrait may have been commissioned by the sitter, Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), who wrote to Whistler, possibly in December 1885 or 1886, that he had paid for his portrait, but, later, possibly in October 1887, he mentioned that £52.10.0 was outstanding ('This leaves me indebted to you for £52.10 for my portrait, to complete the 200 guineas.'). 1 It is not known if these payments were for the full-length portrait, Portrait of Walter Sickert [YMSM 349], or for the two smaller portraits of Sickert painted about the same time (see Sketch Portrait of Walter Sickert [YMSM 350]).

It is not known what happened to the painting on (or before) H. E. Ward's death in 2003: the Black Bass Hotel, with many items from Ward's collection, was bought at auction in March 2008 by Jack Thompson, of the Thompson Organization of car dealerships.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.