The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Lady in Grey dates from 1883/1884.

Lady in Grey, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This work is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 933).

Images

Subject

Sitter

Lady in Grey, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The model has not been identified, despite suggestions that she was Olga Meyer (1871-1930) (who posed in Dieppe in 1885 for Arrangement in Pink, Red and Purple y324), or Millie Finch (fl. 1875-1885), or the women in Red and black m0934 and Note in pink and purple m0935. It is difficult to judge either appearance or age from Whistler's portraits.

Technique

Composition

Whistler in his London studio, photograph, Library of Congress

Detail of statuette in photograph of Whistler in his studio, Library of Congress

Lady in Grey, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whistler worked with Thomas Waldo Story (1855-1915) on a series of small statuettes such as the one on the shelf behind him in this photograph, which shows a woman with similar costume and prominent hat. The statuettes were unfortunately broken and none seem to have survived.

Technique

Lady in Grey, Metropolitan Museum of Art

See MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 933).

History

Provenance

• 1883: possibly with Wunderlich's, New York dealers.
• 1888: owned by Thomas Benedict Clarke (1848-1931), New York;
• 1889: bought by Charles K. Miller, Chicago;
• 1906: bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund.

See further details in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 933).

Exhibitions

• 1889: Second Annual Exhibition of American Oil Paintings, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1889 (cat. no. 54) as 'Lady in Gray'.

Chicago Tribune, 9 June 1889, commended it:

'Whistler's haughty lady in grey is posing...but she does it with absolute frankness. She is there to be impertinent and no one can be as delightfully impertinent as Whistler ...The little picture has been snapped up of course, and thus our supercilious English girl is destined to frown upon Chicago during the rest of her immortal youth.'

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 933) as 'Lady in Grey'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Second Annual Exhibition of American Oil Paintings, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1889 (cat. no. 54) as 'Lady in Gray'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Chicago Tribune, Chicago, 9 June 1889, pl.VI, no. 175m repr.

Journals 1855-1905

• Jullian, P., 'Olga the Wild: The Amazing Baroness de Meyer', Vogue, 1 October 1971, p. 158.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Avery, Kevin J. (ed.), American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 1, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1835, New York, 2002, (cat. no. 105), pp. 284-85, repr. p. 285.

EXHIBITION:

• James McNeill Whistler Seventeenth Anniversary Exhibition, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT, 1949 (cat. no. 42).
• Sweet, Frederick A., James McNeill Whistler, Art Institute of Chicago and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1968 (cat. no. 60).
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Notes, Harmonies, and Nocturnes: Small Works by James McNeill Whistler, M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1984 (cat. no. 28) repr.

Websites

• Metropolitan Museum of Art website at https://www.metmuseum.org.