The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire dates from about 1881.

Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire

The watercolour is catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 854). This record has been updated and corrected.

Images

Subject

Site

Wortley Hall, the family seat of Lord Wharncliffe, is six miles south-east of Barnsley in Yorkshire.

Sitter

Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire

Alberta Victoria Sarah Caroline Paget (Mrs R. G. Wlndsor-Clive) (1863-1944). The daughter of Augustus Berkeley Paget, KCB, H.M.Ambassador, she lived before her marriage at 14 Wimpole Street where she would have been a neighbour of Whistler's brother William McNeill Whistler (1836-1900), who lived at No. 21. She married Robert George Windsor Clive on 11 August 1883. A wealthy landowner, he was Colonel of the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars, Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan from 1890, Paymaster General 1891-2, first Commissioner of Works in 1902, and was created first Earl of Plymouth in 1905; he also wrote John Constable RA (London 1903). They had four children, the eldest being born in 1884.

Technique

Technique

Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire

The Terra Foundation website says:

'Both figure and setting are sketchily painted in thin washes of muted watercolor, suggesting the artist’s rapid, on-site execution. This work is typical of many of Whistler’s watercolors, which he left deliberately unfinished for evocative effect. Their evidence of rapid creative process was central to Whistler’s idea that an artist’s long experience and aesthetic genius were expressed in the merest stroke of the brush and on the most intimate scale.' ¹

Frame

Frame: 14 3/16 x 17 9/16" (36.0 x 44.6 cm).

History

Provenance

REVISED AND UPDATED:

• Date unknown: a watercolour called 'Wortley' was said to have come from the collections of the sculptor, Frederick William MacMonnies (1863-1937), and the mural painter, Robert L. Dodge (d. 1940), according to Hirschl & Adler records.
• Date unknown: bought from a private collector, by Kennedy, New York dealers;
• 1970: sold to a private collector in Marion, Indiana (a/c A16336).
• Date unknown: Margo Pollins Schab, Inc., New York, NY.
• 1994: Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, IL;
• 2003: closure of Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago;
• 2003/2005: works on paper transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago.

There are gaps in the known provenance.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 854) as 'Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire'.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Visages de l'Amérique: de George Washington à Marilyn Monroe (Faces of America: From George Washington to Marilyn Monroe), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, 2004.

Websites

• Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018, website at https://collection.terraamericanart.org.