Provenance

• 1890: commissioned by Edward William Hooper (1839-1901), Boston, on 20 June 1890 for 200 gns;
• 1901: bequeathed to his daughter Ellen Sturgis Hooper (Mrs John B. Potter) (1872-1974);
• 1974: bequeathed to her daughter Mary Frances Potter (Mrs John Butler Swann) (1911-1989), Stockbridge, MA.
• 1993: sold through Peter Nahum, Leicester Galleries, London, and Vance Jordan (d. 2003), New York art dealer, to Willard G. Clark (1930-2015) and his wife Elizabeth Clark, Hanford, CA;
• 2015-2018: private collection;
• 2018: with Sotheby's, New York;
• 2019: sold at auction, Sotheby's, New York, 21 May 2019 (lot 48).

Exhibitions

• 1895: Loan Collection of Portraits of Women for the Benefit of The Boston Children's Aid Society and the Sunnyside Day Nursery, Copley Society, Boston, 1895 (cat. no. 880) as 'An unfinished portrait'.
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 50) as 'An unfinished portrait'.

Portrait of Ellen Sturgis Hooper, detail of photograph, 1904

A photograph shows it on exhibition in Boston in 1904.