The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella dates from between June 1894 and 1902. ¹

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, Terra Foundation for American Art

1894: The portrait was started in Paris in June 1894. ² On 13 July Whistler wrote, 'The Kinsella portrait is begun and promises superbly.' ³

1895: In November Whistler was in Lyme Regis but had written to 'the yaller Kinsella' that he hoped to continue sittings on his return to London later in the month. ⁴ Writing to Miss Kinsella he asserted that the delays would not damage progress on the picture:

'When the work is completed and is beautiful as this picture cannot help being, all that will be forgotten - and it is only the outside world that will have waited! -

In this case, curiously enough, time will have been gained - for I have been going through a rare training lately - of which, I promise, you shall reap the benefit -

I have been also in a manner painting your portrait every day! - so that when I come to you we shall finish it in a trice.' ⁵

1896: In June he was painting Miss Kinsella in London. ⁶ He wrote on 15 June suggesting a sitting:

'if you think you would like to stand on Thursday, and could come in the morning - say at eleven o'clock, I could get ready for that day -

I would propose that you might stay until about 3 o'clock or so - resting as much as you like and taking it "easy"!' ⁷

And again on 2 July, he wrote to her:

'I have had quite an inspiration about your picture -

The result will be, I think, something remarkable ...

Monday we had better say in any case - though if, I can manage it, we might try and get a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon from 2. o'clock - if that would be convenient.' ⁸

Two days later he wrote to the sitter postponing a sitting, and saying that he had shown the portrait to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925):

'Tomorrow wont do - for I could not be ready with what I want for the picture yet - though I hope to manage by tuesday -

For this much I will say - the change is not at all in you - Indeed I am so very much pleased with yourself in the picture that today I showed the portrait to Sargent! - He came to see me - and you know I dont show my things - but I couldn't resist it! - He was I really believe very much struck - He said it is very beautiful - and I must say I admired it myself quite recklessly for once - Certainly the pink lady stood up magnificently and looked back at us with the utmost calm and assurance - No - you are going on to the finish apparently with the greatest possible ease - very nearly approaching that finish as it is - and if I can only get what I want the painting promises to be remarkable -

In short the combination, as I now have thought it out, is one that I doubt [not] has never been made at all -

I certainly have never seen any thing of the kind in any large work - I mean that perhaps in some of the tiny pastels I may have hinted at something like the crispness and sparkle I have now in my mind but a full length portrait is a very different matter.' ⁹

On 7 July he asked for another sitting: 'I have managed to keep the drapery as it stands - and I think the painting will be dry enough - for Thursday - day after tomorrow - So do come - 10.30 - for 11. in the morning.' ¹⁰ Then, on 21 July he heard of her imminent departure from London:

'Now this is a shock! -

I certainly think that I must see you, and we ought to get one or two more sittings this week - before you go - Will you come in tomorrow at 2. o'clock? - ...

I bought an old chasuble of a lovely colour on purpose.' ¹¹

On 24 July Whistler complained to E. G. Kennedy that 'the ways of Miss Kinsella's are ... most terrible and trying to me' and she was planning to return to France for four months,

' ... this picture which we have lugged over from Paris and got accustomed to in the London studio - where it is upon the eve of completion - and to take it back to the studio in the rue Notre Dame du Champs would mean I really don't know what! - Change of light - doubt and heaven knows what else - ruin of the work almost unless I can get it so much further on that nothing should matter - so that I am necessarily again a mere slave to the situation - for I consider the picture, as a work, one of the most important, if not the most important I have ever undertaken -

Therefore I put everything else aside until I shall get from her the next three or four sittings.' ¹²

She was, apparently, still in London in August and Whistler actually wrote postponing a sitting:

'I am thinking that after all our lovely picture ought to have a day or twos rest! -

Let us all profit by it - and say Monday - We dont want the canvas to lose any of its bloom - ... and if you like to ask the others up ... we can show them the "Iris" lady on Monday evening or Tuesday!' ¹³

Whistler planned to continue working on the portrait in London in September 1896 but it is not certain that he did so. ¹⁴

1897: According to Pennell, the portrait, having been started in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs about 1894, was being worked on at the studio in Fitzroy Street in April 1897, 'when it was so perfect that one more day's work seemed to us a danger', but it was ruined by all Whistler's scraping down and repainting. ¹⁵

In March Whistler asked Miss Kinsella for two more sittings, 'and then I think we may consider the work complete!!' because it was close to the Salon submission date and 'I should like . . greatly! to see you in the Champs de Mars!' ¹⁶ Unfortunately, he became ill and had to abandon this plan. ¹⁷ In November sittings were continued briefly in Paris. ¹⁸

1898: Whistler continued to suffer ill health, although he hoped to continue sittings in Paris, and wrote to Miss Kinsella: 'When you run up to Paris do let me know - and you might perhaps come in some afternoon at about 5. to the Atelier.' ¹⁹

1902: The painting was still in progress in May and June. On 9 June Whistler invited Miss Kinsella to tea in the studio, '[to] meet again The beautiful lady who has been so long waiting for you? !' ²⁰ But she waited in vain!

Images

Subject

Titles

Minor variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'the "Iris" lady' (1896, Whistler). ²¹
• 'Rose et Vert, L'Iris' (1898/1902, Whistler). ²²
• ' "Rose et Violet (L'Iris)" unfinished' (1904, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). ²³
• 'Rose et Vert, L'Iris: Portrait of Miss Kinsella' (1905, ISSPG). ²⁴
• 'Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella' (1980, YMSM). ²⁵

'Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella' is the preferred form of the title.

Description

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, Terra Foundation for American Art

A full-length portrait of a woman with dark brown hair, in vertical format. She stands in three-quarter view to left and holds an iris in her right hand. Her left arm hangs at her side, with a mauve scarf or stole dangling from her hand, and draping across the skirt. Her dress is light pink/lilac, low cut, with a deep lace trim around the bodice, and a long skirt that swirls to left in the foreground. The background is dark brown.

In 1896 Whistler mentioned 'I bought an old chasuble of a lovely colour'. ²⁶ A chasuble is an ornate vestment worn by priests, and it is obviously not being worn by her but may be the purple material that she is holding in her left hand.

Sitter

Louisa ('Louise') Kinsella (b. ca 1865, d.1923) was born on 26 July 1864. She was the daughter of the Irish-born American newspaper editor Thomas Kinsella (1832-1884) and his wife Elizabeth (Bess) née Lawless. In the 1875 census for the Brooklyn Ward, New York, his age is given as 44 and his wife's as 42 (they were born in County Wexford), and their children (all born in King's, New York) are listed as Hannah aged 20, Frances aged 12, Louisa aged 10, and Catherine aged 9. ²⁷

The sisters were considered very beautiful. After attending a Catholic convent in Paris three of them stayed on, a popular focus of expatriate society. In the Spring of 1894 they rented a house at Giverny.

C. Conder, A Summer Afternoon: The Green Apple, 1894, Tate Britain, N03837

Louisa ('Louise') was described as 'golden-haired and dove-like but for sudden flashes.' ²⁸ William Rothenstein (1872-1945) made a drawing of Louisa, and Charles Conder (1868-1909) fell in love with her, and painted her several times, including in The Green Apple (Tate, 1894). She attended Whistler's funeral in London in 1903. She died on 12 October 1923.

Hannah married first Robert Payne, and after his death, Alfred Pagelow, and died in Brooklyn in 1934; she was survived by two of her sisters, Mrs Margaret Burton, in London, England, and Catherine ('Katharine', 'Kate'), the Marchesa Presbitero. ²⁹ The Marchesa, who was a painter and based in Rome, inherited Whistler's portrait of her sister.

Comments

The Terra Foundation website comments:

'The title of Miss Kinsella’s portrait makes the sitter secondary to the color scheme and the floral reference. The work makes little pretense of characterizing, describing, or individualizing its subject – except perhaps obliquely, by likening her to the elegant flower delicately held in her extended hand. While Whistler’s portrait of his mother and other early portraits play the figure against the flat, decorative background in harmonious color schemes, in this work this shadowy rendering of the figure against a darkened background, along with her artificial pose proffering the iris, hint at symbolic meaning. In this respect, Rose et Vert, l’Iris: Portrait of Miss Kinsella echoes precedents in medieval and Renaissance art, in which flowers often have emblematic value, as well as more recent developments in European art with whose principal players Whistler had associated: the English Pre-Raphaelite movement, whose adherents used medieval legends and modern themes as moral allegories; and symbolism, a movement in poetry as well as the visual arts to give form to ideas from the subconscious. In this suggestive portrait, Whistler aimed to infuse an ideal of female form with an aura of timelessness and subtle mystery.' ³⁰

Technique

Composition

H. Dixon & Son, Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, photograph, 1894/1904, GU Whistler PH4/57/2

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, Terra Foundation for American Art

An early photograph, possibly taken during Whistler's lifetime, shows greater distinction between the light floor and the dark background.

The Terra website comments:

'Emerging from a shadowy, dim background, the woman assumes a deliberately artificial pose, holding an iris in her right hand and gathering the folds of her long, low-cut dress in the left. The train of her diaphanous pink gown sweeps across the ground in front of her, as if she has just turned and paused in mid-stride, but her direct gaze evinces “the utmost calm and assurance,” according to the artist.' ³¹

Technique

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, Terra Foundation for American Art

It is painted on rather coarse canvas, which, as Dunstan pointed out, means that although it was repeatedly rubbed and scraped down it did not end up with a surface like linoleum. ³²

Nevertheless there is an uncomfortable contrast between the head and the very thoroughly scraped down areas of her bare shoulders. Her right hand, holding the iris, is carefully but not very accurately drawn, and her other hand is a blur lost in the sweep of her dress.

The Pennells commented:

'We saw it in the Fitzroy Street studio when it was so perfect that one more day's work seemed to us a danger. But Whistler scraped it out and painted it over ruthlessly, never satisfied, always striving to improve, though nobody could help, at one moment, feeling that to change anything must be to the picture's disadvantage. In no other portrait did he ever paint flesh with such perfection. Face and neck had the rich golden quality of a Titian, with a subtlety of modelling beyond even the Venetian master. One day, when E. [Elizabeth R. Pennell] went to the studio, he had just scraped down neck and bust for no other reason she could discover than because he could not get the hand to come right with the rest of it. It was to be lovelier than ever, he said. It retains but a shadow of its old loveliness.' ³³

The Terra website adds:

'Whistler had painted it in a series of thin glazes that he applied and then partly removed, painstakingly building up the layers to achieve an ethereal, luminous appearance. In 1897... Joseph Pennell … was afraid Whistler’s continued work would ruin it. Dissatisfied, Whistler then proceeded to scrape out and repaint various areas of the surface, in several places allowing the coarse texture of the canvas to interfere with the appearance of the pigment. As a result, the soft, limpid effect Whistler intended disappeared in the rather scrubbed surface of the painting.' ³⁴

Conservation History

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, photograph, 1894/1904, GUL Whistler PH4/57/2

Rose et violet: (L'Iris), photograph, 1904, from Les Arts

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, photograph, ca 1974, GUL WPP

Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella, Terra Foundation for American Art

The Pennells say it was, at Whistler's death, 'a mere phantom of its former self, painted over and over, and yet left unfinished ... an impression of the first splendid beauty of the picture, and the charm of the colour scheme ... remains.' ³⁵ It has been, over the years, both cleaned and restored, but is rather dark. Some areas, such as the face, look very thin and insubstantial. Because the images reproduced above were done by different processes or taken under varying light conditions, and because they are mostly undated, it is impossible to draw conclusions as to what exactly represents Whistler's work, and what, that of later conservators.

Frame

205.7 x 102.6 cm (81 x 40 3/8") .

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903 and passed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1904/1905: sent by her to the sitter's sister, Catherine ('Kate') Kinsella, Marquesa Presbitero (b. ca 1866,d.1955), Rome;
• 1923: after the sitter's death, ownership passed to the Marchesa Presbitero;
• ca 1944: given to her niece, Olivia Frances Kinsella Robinson (Mrs Cecil F. D. H. B. Durham) (1903-1984), Basingstoke;
• By 1955: given to her daughter, Anne-Louise Durham (Mrs R. Pleydell-Bouverie) (1940-1996) and son-in-law, Robin Pleydell-Bouverie (b. 1937, div. 1975);
• 1972: sold by them to Meredith J. Long (n/a), art dealer, Houston.
• 1974-1975: with Davis & Long Co., New York dealers;
• 1977: sold by Davis & Long Co. to the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation;
• 1980/1987: with Davis & Langdale Co., Inc., New York;
• 1987: bought by Daniel J. Terra (1911-1996) for the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago;
• 2015: transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1907, despite the efforts of Dugald Sutherland MacColl (1859-1948), the National Gallery, London refused to purchase the portrait. ³⁶

The painting was lent by the Marchesa Presbitero to the Tate Gallery in 1934, and by Mrs D. M. Rowan Rhys to the Tate Gallery in 1951. ³⁷ Mrs Durham's daughter and son-in-law, Mr and Mrs Robin Pleydell-Bouverie, lent it to an exhibition in the Leicester Galleries in 1955 (it was not in the catalogue).

Exhibitions

• 1904: Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, 14th exhibition, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1904 (cat. no. 1315) as ' "Rose et Violet (L'Iris)" unfinished.'
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 44) as 'Rose et Vert, L'Iris: Portrait of Miss Kinsella'.

Rose et violet: (L'Iris), photograph, 1904, from Les Arts

The painting was described as unfinished in the catalogue of the 1904 exhibition, and indeed, Maurice Hamel (fl. 1887-1905) in his review of the Salon, certainly took it to be so. ³⁸ The photograph reproduced in his review may date from that time, or have been taken earlier: it appears sharper and more detailed than the painting in its current state.

While accepting that the portrait was not finished, the art critic of The Athenaeum wrote an enthusiastic review, delighted that 'the right inspiration could rouse the real genius of the man to the very end.' The critic continued:

'We see too, in this mysteriously beautiful figure a poetry, a tenderness of feeling, which can hardly be found elsewhere in the artist's work. It is, in fact, one of the few dramatic portraits Whistler has painted – one of the few in which a mood gives to every line and tone a particular significance. The tall figure, dressed in a long trailing gown of deep rose mauve, moves before a deep violet curtain … The movement is not completely worked out … She seems to have come forward slowly with an almost queenly stateliness and distinction of bearing, but then to have hesitated … like some sleep-walking beauty who has woken in an age that has forgotten courtliness; and the hesitation of the movement is echoed in the proud pathos of the face. The colour is marvellous; it is very low in tone, and no words can be found to describe the elusive ... tints of deep violet and rose against which the flesh of dull golden hue is relieved. It is unfinished, it is true; the shadow tones of the dress are not quite in key, the position of the left arm is not perfectly ascertained; but enough is here to make this a great Whistler.' ³⁹

With which sympathetic and poetically expressed opinion the artist would undoubtedly have agreed!

It is recorded that when Auguste Rodin (1840-1817) saw the painting in 1905, 'he praised neck and bust as "a beautiful suggestion of lace," ' but the Pennells, in reporting this praise, added that this was because it was 'so badly disfigured by scraping and repainting.' ⁴⁰

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. 420), plate 258, as 'Rose et vert: L'Iris – Portrait of Miss Kinsella'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, 14th exhibition, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1904 (cat. no. 1315) as ' "Rose et Violet (I'Iris)" unfinished.'
• Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 44) as 'Rose et Vert, L'Iris: Portrait of Miss Kinsella', repr. f.p. 98 in de luxe edition.

Journals 1855-1905

• Hamel, Maurice, 'Les Salons de 1904, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts', Les Arts, no. 29, May 1904, pp. 12-23, at p. 16, repr. p. 19.
• Anon., 'The Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts', The Athenaeum, 7 May 1904, pp. 598-99, at p. 598.

Monographs

• Dunstan, Bernard, 'Whistler’s Portrait of Miss Louise Kinsella', Artist, vol. 84, January 1973, p. 158.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 396).
• Cary, Elisabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler, New York, 1913, p. 215.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 157-58, 187, 279, repr. f.p. 154.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 5th (revised) edition, London and Philadelphia, 1911, pp. 321-22.
• Pousette-Dart, Nathaniel, James McNeill Whistler, New York, 1924, repr.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, pp. 39-40 (cat. no. 127).
• Spencer, Robin, ed. Whistler: A Retrospective. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989, pp. 312, 344, repr. p. 312, pl. 101.
• Sutton, Denys, Nocturne: The Art of James McNeill Whistler, London, 1963, p. 128.

Books, General

• Dunstan, Bernard, Painting Techniques of the Impressionists,, London and New York, 1976, repr. p. 99.
• Galbally, Anna, Charles Conder: the last Bohemian, Melbourne, 2004, p. 116.
• Gathorne-Hardy, Robert (ed.), Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell 1915–1918, London, 1974, p. 264.
• Rothenstein, William, Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein ..., 2 vols, London, 1931-1932, pp. 79-80.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• New Year Exhibition. Pictures, Drawings and Sculpture by 19th and 20th Century Artists, Ernest Brown & Philips Ltd., Leicester Galleries, London, 1955.
• Four for Whistler: An Exhibition by the Pupils of James McNeill Whistler, Parkin Gallery, London, 1972 (cat. no. 52).
• The Aesthetic Movement and Cult of Japan, The Fine Art Society, London, 1972, repr. (cat. no. 67), p. 19.
• American Painting, Davis & Long Company, Inc., New York, 1974, repr. (cat. no. 34).
• Wattenmaker, Richard J., Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1975, pp. 151-52.
• La Femme, American Art: Images of Beauty (1880–1917), Grand Central Art Galleries, Inc., New York, 1983.
• Nochlin, Linda, Woman, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, 1984, p. 7; repr. no. 19, p. 21.
• La Femme, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, 1984-1985.
• Atkinson, D. Scott, et al., in Terry A. Neff (ed.), A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1987, pl. T-41, p. 150.
• A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1987.
• Face to Face: Portraits from the Collections of Terra Museum of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1994-1995.
• American Treasures: Chase, Whistler, and the Prendergasts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1996-1997.
• Reymond, Nathalie, Un regard américain sur Paris (An American Glance at Paris). Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1997, p. 99, repr. p. 96.
• 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.
• Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy, Visages de l'Amérique: le portrait dans la collection de la Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1770–1940, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, 2004, pp. 17, 34 (checklist), repr. p. 55.
• Lévy, Sophie, et al., Twarze Ameryki: Portrety z kolekcji Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940 (Faces of America: Portraits from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, and Miedzynarodowe Centrum Kultury (International Cultural Center), Cracow, Poland (organizers), 2006.
• Lecomte, Vanessa (ed.), Portrait of a Lady : peintures et photographies américaines en France, 1870–1915 (Portrait of a Lady: American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, 2008, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, 2008-2009.

Journals 1906-Present

• Bulletin of Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, vol. 4:6, June 1975, n.p., repr.
• Dunstan, Bernard, 'Whistler’s Portrait of Miss Louise Kinsella', Artist, vol. 84, January 1973, p. 158.

Newspapers 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Terra Foundation website at http://collection.terraamericanart.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 228).

Other

• None.