The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Yellow Room dates from 1883/1884.

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 881). The information is updated and corrected here.

Images

Subject

Site

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whistler's house at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, London.

Sitter

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Maud Franklin (1857-1939).

Technique

Technique

There are traces of graphite under-drawing. The paper has a slight grain. Whistler worked freely with varied techniques, dropping pink and violet into a wet base for the parasol, the picture and embroidery, and using a narrow pointed brush for the crisp ruffles of the dress. There is some body-colour or gouache on the picture on the wall, the woman's face and on her dress, and parasol, and white lines on the chair. Under the embroidered hanging, to right of the fireplace, the black shadow appears oily and the paint has separated. At the lower right corner some of the paint has separated, possibly this being a feature like a curtain that was altered or an area that was damaged.

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are considerable traces of reworking by the artist, above the figure, above her knee, and to left of the foot. There is a small butterfly at lower right, to right of the chair leg, which has been scraped out. There are two butterflies at upper left, the final one being below another that was painted over.

The Metropolitan Museum comments:

'The Yellow Room is among Whistler’s most accomplished watercolors, a harmonious "arrangement" of violet and yellow, dating from his most experimental period of working with the progressive medium at a critical career juncture.

The harmonized interiors of Tite Street, which one friend described as having the effect of "standing inside an egg," echoed Whistler’s most controversial exhibition—the 1883 Arrangement in White and Yellow at London’s Fine Art Society. In these terms, The Yellow Room synthesizes many aspects of Whistler’s most adventurous art and design work in the early 1880s—from the private, informal view of his favorite model and muse "at home" to his contemporaneous production of avant-garde works on paper and his fastidious decoration of customized spaces for the display of art.' ¹

Conservation History

The paper is laid down on card. The paper is slightly darkened at the edges from the mat; the board is slightly oxidised.

History

Provenance

• 1892: possibly with the Goupil Gallery, London.
• By 1896: owned by Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927), London.
• After 1896: with the Goupil Gallery, London.
• By 1923: with Scott & Fowles, New York;
• 1923: bought by Ellen Henderson (1869-1935), New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 January 1923;
• 1935: bequeathed to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939);
• 1939: passed by family descent to his wife, Jeanne Henderson (d. 1970), and their son Charles Crawford Henderson (d. 2016);
• 2017: auctioned, Christie's, New York, 23 May 2017 (lot 11), unsold;
• 2017: acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove, Jr, Fund.

'3' is written on the verso of the card. Unidentified marks on the verso of the wood backing include 'G / 1892' in a square, and the name of Goupil & Co.

Exhibitions

• 1884: possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 21) 'Harmony in violet and yellow'.
• 1896: Loan Collection of Watercolour Drawings, Guildhall Corporation of London Art Gallery, London, 1896 (cat. no. 108) 'A Drawing'.

The Irish painter Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) sketched the woman's figure in this watercolour when it was exhibited at the Guildhall in 1896. ²

A label on the verso from an unidentified source reads 'No:59 - 'A Study - woman seated'.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 881) as 'The Yellow Room'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 21) 'Harmony in violet and yellow'.
• Loan Collection of Watercolour Drawings, Guildhall Corporation of London Art Gallery, London, 1896 (cat. no. 108) 'A Drawing'.
• Possibly Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (ex. cat.).

Books on Whistler

• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 3rd edition, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1909, p. 300.

Catalogues 1906-Present

EXHIBITIONS:

• Early Masters of Modern Art: A Local Collection, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1959 (cat. no. 55).
• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960, p. 81 (cat. no. 91).
• New Orleans Collects: Early Masters of Modern Art, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1968 (cat. no. 31).
• Anonymous loan to St Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts, Florida, 1992.
• Dorment, Richard, and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler, Tate Gallery, London, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1994-1995, p. 214 (cat. no. 131).
• Merrill, Linda, 'Whistler in America', in: After Whistler: The Artists and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, pp. 10-31, p. 53, repr. fig. 41.
• Calloway, Stephen, and Lynn Federle Orr (eds), The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2011, p. 189, fig. 163.

SALE:

• Christie's, New York, 23 May 2017 (lot 11).

Journals 1906-Present

• R. Anderson, 'Whistler in Dublin,' Irish Arts Review, vol. 3, no. 3, Autumn 1985, pp. 46-47.

Websites

• 'Works by Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Whistler and other masters from The Collection of Hunt Henderson', Christie's, New York, 2017, website.
• 'American Paintings Christie's New York 10 A.M., May 23, 2017' in 'Art/Auctions', The City Review, 2017, website at http://www.thecityreview.com (acc. 2018).
• Metropolitan Museum of Art website at https://www.metmuseum.org.