The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Portrait of William M. Chase dates from the summer of 1885. ¹

According to Roof, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) wrote to Alice Bremond Gerson Chase (1866-1927) in 1885, 'Whistler has begun a full length portrait of me, and I will stay to enable him to finish it', and a month later, 'He is most finished with my portrait.' ² According to Chase:

'It was arranged that whichever was specially in the mood was to paint while the other posed. Whistler, I speedily found, was always "specially in the mood," and as a consequence, I began posing at once, and continued to pose. He proved to be a veritable tyrant, painting every day into the twilight, while my limbs ached with weariness and my head swam dizzily. "Don't move! Don't move!" he would scream whenever I started to rest.' ³

The Pennells dated the portrait incorrectly as about 1886/1887, and described it as 'a full-length ... in frock-coat and top hat, a cane held jauntily across his legs ... The portrait has never been seen since, but has vanished with many another.' ⁴

The portrait was nearly finished about a week before Whistler and Chase left for Holland in August 1885. Whistler wrote to Chase on the eve of the latter's departure for America later that autumn, expressing disappointment that the portrait was 'not in its perfect condition' and thus not to be taken away by Chase, and adding, 'Therefore ... I shall keep the picture here and bring it over with me [to New York] to finish in your studio.' ⁵ On 3 September 1885 Chase wrote to Whistler begging him not to continue if he did not wish to:

'If this portrait is prooving [sic] a dreadful [bore?] to you & there is any danger of your coming to hate the very sight of me? I beg you to give it up, and forget that it was ever begun. My only thought in asking you to paint me was that you might feel perfect liberty to do as you like.' ⁶

Whistler never went to America again, and the painting disappeared without trace.

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Portrait of William M. Chase' (1890, YMSM). ⁷

Description

According to the Pennells, it was 'a full-length ... in frock-coat and top hat, a cane held jauntily across his legs'. ⁸

Sitter

M. Menpes, W. M. Chase and J. McN. Whistler, photo, Library of Congress, LOT 12422

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). A photograph of Whistler with Chase and Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938), about this time, was published by Menpes, and is reproduced above. ⁹

William Merritt Chase, Portrait of J. McN. Whistler, 1885, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chase met Whistler in London in 1885 and each painted the portrait of the other, apparently working turn and turn about. Whistler appreciated 'the Colonel and his kindliness and good companionship ... Your stay here was charming for me and I only fear that you may have carried away an impression of intolerance and disputatiousness as my characteristics', but, 'Our two pictures the World must will have still to wait for - We rather handicapped each other!' ¹⁰

Whistler, in a letter to the World, 13 October 1886, wrote of his (unfinished) portrait of Chase that he had 'made him beautiful on canvas - the Masher of the Avenues', and contrasting this portrait with what he called Chase's 'monstrous lampoon' upon himself. ¹¹

Technique

Technique

Unknown. Both the portrait of Chase and that of Whistler by Chase were, according to Whistler, unfinished:

'Meanwhile our two pictures By the way the world will have to wait, for yet a little while longer. You see colonel we rather handicapped each other I fancy and neither master is really quite fit for public presentation as he stands on canvas at this moment.

[In] these matters I never deceive myself and I saw at once on my return from abroad that the work is not in its perfect condition and Whistler cannot allow any canvas stamped with the butterfly to leave his studio until he is thoroughly satisfied with it himself. Therefore my dear Colonel I shall keep the picture here and bring it over with me to finish in your studio.' ¹²

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Unknown.

History

Provenance

Unknown, probably destroyed.

Whistler returned Chase's down payment, because he said the portrait was unfinished:

"Under the circumstances I send you back the thirty pounds you had given me on your portrait - trust me it is better so - it would only make me nervous and unhappy were I to keep it before my work pleased me. While I shall be delighted to take it from you over there when I have done well - 'as it is my wont.' " ¹³

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 322), plate 421, as 'Portrait of William M. Chase'.

Authored by Whistler

• Whistler, J. McN., letter to Editor, The World, London, 13 October 1886, reprinted in Whistler, James McNeill, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, London, 1890, pp. 184-85, 'Nostalgia'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Menpes, Mortimer, Whistler as I Knew Him, London, 1904, photograph of sitter repr. f.p. 152.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 26, 29-30.
• Petri, Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler, Hildesheim, 2011, pp. 353-54.
• Sutherland, Daniel E., Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake, New Haven and London, 2014, p. 212.

Books, General

• Chase, William Merritt, 'The Two Whistlers: Recollections of a Summer with the Great Etcher', The Century Magazine, vol. 80, June 1910, pp. 219-26, at p. 220.
• Roof, Katharine Metcalf, The life and art of William Merritt Chase, New York, 1917, pp. 112, 114, 140-42.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• None.

Journals 1906-Present

• MacDonald, Margaret, 'James McNeill Whistler: An Artist on Artists', in Visualizing Identities: The Male Artist in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Visual Culture in Britain, vol. 16, issue 3, 2015, pp. 200-222.

Websites

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

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 191).

Other

• None.