The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth'; v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland' probably date from 1872.

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Art Institute of Chicago

v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Art Institute of Chicago

The drawings are fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 454).

Images

Subject

Description

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Art Institute of Chicago

A drawing in vertical format, showing a woman in a black dress, standing in near profile to right, with the train of her skirt curved round to the front. Her eyes and nose are roughly indicated, but not the mouth. She has her hair bound with ribbons and held in a chignon or bun. There are white frills at neck and wrist, and she holds a necklace of pale blue beads in her right hand. She stands on a carpet with a chequered band at the far edge, and behind her is a pale blue curtain decorated with a thin band of dots at the top and wider one near the bottom. A few flecks of white suggest blossoms at left.

v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Art Institute of Chicago

An unfinished sketch of a woman seen from the back, her hands clasped behind her back. No head is visible. She has narrow sleeves with slight puffs at her shoulders, and a train hangs from below the ruff at her neck, spreading out over the skirt, with folds curving slightly to left, and decorated at right with rosettes.

Sitter

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Art Institute of Chicago

v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Art Institute of Chicago

The drawings were studies for portraits of Helen Rose Huth (1837-1924) and Frances Leyland (1834-1910), but they were not necessarily actually posing for these studies.

Technique

Composition

v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Art Institute of Chicago

Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland, The Frick Collection

The drawing on the verso is a rough study for Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland y106. In the final painting the figure, though still seen from the back, is seen turning more to left. Branka Nakanishi considered that the details of dress and pose suggest this is the last of Whistler's series of designs for the composition. ¹

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Art Institute of Chicago

Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Private Collection

The drawing on the recto is a study for Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth y125. Stephanie L. Strother notes : 'The pose and dress are translated fairly directly from the study to the painting, although the train is more extensive in the painting, and the viewpoint slightly higher.' ²

Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Ashmolean Museum

A second study, Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth' m0455, is closer to the final composition in colour, omitting the pale blues of the first design.

Strother comments interestingly on the connections between these and other compositions and accessories:

'the two portraits on the Art Institute sheet do reveal instances of cross-fertilization. The dashes of white on the left edge of the drawing of Mrs. Huth may be a reference to a spray of flowers, such as those appearing in a similar location in the oil painting of Mrs. Leyland. Further, the rug in the Huth drawing—although not included in the final painting of Huth—was likely the one seen in the Leyland oil painting, albeit in a different palette. A version of this rug also appears in another oil portrait from the same period, Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander y129. The patterned curtain in the drawing of Mrs. Huth has additionally been compared to the wall hanging in Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother y101 These shared props reveal Whistler’s fluidity with design elements between works—what did not serve one in the final analysis might serve another.' ³

Technique

r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth', Art Institute of Chicago

v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Art Institute of Chicago

The figures are outlined in black and illuminated with light flecks of pale coloured pastels, with the brown of the unevenly textured paper providing a mid-colour. ⁴

History

Provenance

• Before 1925: possibly with Robert Dunthorne (1850-1925), London art dealer.
• 1925: possibly consigned by Edwin Thompson, Liverpool, to Christie's, London, 27 February 1925 (lot 101) as 'Lady in a black dress', bought by Brown and Phillips, London dealers.
• 1927: possibly with David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), London art dealer;
• 1927: probably bought from Albert Louis Roullier (1858-1920), Chicago art dealer, by Walter Stanton Brewster (1872-1954);
• 1933: given to the Art Institute of Chicago.

There are some inconsistencies in the records. There is no proof that (as suggested in the 1995 catalogue) it was given to the sitter (or, one of the sitters). The history of the drawing before it was sold by Roullier is uncertain. Further details are given in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 454).

Exhibitions

• It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 454) as "r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth'; v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland' ".

Books on Whistler

• MacDonald, Margaret F., Susan Galassi, Aileen Ribeiro, and Patricia de Montfort, Whistler, Women and Fashion, New Haven and London, 2003, pp. 104-105.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., (ed.) Whistler's Mother: An American Icon, Aldershot and Burlington, 2003, pp. 38-40, repr.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1998, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1998-1999, pp. 24 and 30 (cat. no. 15), fig. 5.
• Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon Returns to Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2017 (no cat.).

Journals 1906-Present

• Nakanishi, Branka, 'A Symphony Reexamined: An Unpublished Study for Whistler's Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland', Museum Studies, Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 156-67, 189-91.
• Harriet K. Stratis and Britt Salvesen (eds), The Broad Spectrum: Studies in Materials, Techniques, and Conservation of Color on Paper, London, 2002, p. 37, fig. 1.26, repr.

Websites

• Clarke, Jay A., and Sarah Kelly Oehler, eds., Whistler Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2020, website (cat. no. 14).