The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

M.0881
The Yellow Room

The Yellow Room

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1883/1884
Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Accession Number: 2017.664
Medium: watercolour and gouache
Support: ivory paper on paperboard
Size: 9 3/4 x 7" (248 x 178 mm)
Signature: butterfly (and traces of two butterflies)
Inscription: none

Date

The Yellow Room dates from 1883/1884.

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art
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

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Subject

Site

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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

Sitter

The Yellow Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art
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
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

'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

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

Catalogues 1855-1905

Books on Whistler

Catalogues 1906-Present

EXHIBITIONS:

SALE:

Journals 1906-Present

Websites


Notes:

1: Website at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/760942.

2: National Gallery of Ireland, PD 4007 TX 1, website at http://catalogue.nli.ie, drawing by Osborne repr. R. Anderson, 'Whistler in Dublin,' Irish Arts Review, vol. 3, no. 3, Autumn 1985, pp. 46-47, repr. drawing by Osborne.