The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis was painted after 1896 in Whistler's studio at 8 Fitzroy Street, London, where the sitter's mother was Whistler's housekeeper from 1896-1897. The source of this date was Harold Wright (1885-1961), probably recording information from the artist's sister-in-law, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958). ¹

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis, The Hunterian

In 1899 Whistler told Miss Birnie Philip to ask the Goupil Gallery in London to send two portraits of Lizzie to him in Paris, 'you had better send over the little Lizzie - there are two - the old black one, and a rather fair one barely begun.' ² However, it is not known if he worked on it further.

Images

Subject

Titles

Whistler's own title is not known. Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis' ([1958?], anon.). ³
• 'Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

The Willis family's liking for gin (the drink flavoured with juniper) undoubtedly suggested the title. ⁵ Lizzie Willis's mother, said Whistler, 'would go drunk to the gallows - silent, sodden and uncomplaining', and he recorded a conversation with Lizzie where she admitted having drunk gin and rum but actually preferred whisky! ⁶

Description

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis, The Hunterian

An unfinished head and shoulders portrait of a young girl in vertical format. She has short curly brown hair, and wears a fluffy black scarf over a frill- or lace-trimmed high-neck blouse. She has a narrow elliptical face, delicate features and large brown eyes, and stares straight at the viewer. Much of the lower half of the canvas is bare.

Sitter

Whistler painted three pictures of Lizzie (this portrait, Little Lizzie Willis y476 and The Little London Sparrow y477). She was the daughter of Mrs Willis, who was housekeeper at 8 Fitzroy Street from the summer of 1896. By the winter of 1896-1897 she had proved unsatisfactory, and Whistler complained: 'The studio was like a cellar - and this after Mrs Willis had promised to light my fire for me early in the morning.' ⁷ However, Whistler recorded a wonderful conversation with young Lizzie Willis:

'Studio awful - Conversation this afternoon with Lizzie - simple English child - . . . . . . "Yes - and we had another New Years present last night! - - . . a quarter bottle of Whisky" - . . Oh - I said, and who had that? - "Why Daddy and Mother of course" - . Well, I said, but what should you know about it? - "Why I had some too of course!" - Did you indeed? and how much? - "Well I had a glass to myself - Scotch it was - t'was good! I always has it - and gin sometimes - and rum - but I likes whisky best I does - " . . . But I said doesn't it make you tipsy! - "Oh - gigle! gigle [sic] - I was drunk once!!" . . . and then the infant became inarticulate in the merriment of her recollections.' ⁸

There is a pen drawing of Lizzie Willis, not related to the oil portraits of her, in a letter. ⁹

Technique

Technique

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis, The Hunterian

The design was sketched in what appears to be crayon on a fine, open-weave, tabby unprimed canvas. It has a roughly-applied, thick brown-grey artist's imprimatura made from lead white, bone black, yellow ochre, vermilion and (probably) prussian blue. It has an original loose lining, which is primed, with the grey priming facing outwards. ¹⁰ The canvas has an uneven texture.

The face and upper shoulders were sketched with a crayon-like black material, but the drawing lines fizzle out towards the torso. The face and hair were painted with conspicuous brushstrokes in thin dry paint, the edges of the face and hair soft and blurred. Scumbles of brown paint were brushed over the grey for the hair. The colours are very delicate and the face is carefully modelled in pale shades of grey, brown and delicate pink. Tiny white highlights bring the eyes to life. The grey imprimatura shows through in the lighter areas. The paint colours include mixtures of lead white, bone black, yellow, red and brown ochre, cadmium yellow and ultramarine, used in different proportions, to create a colour harmony. ¹¹ The effect is fresh and direct.

Conservation History

There are small paint losses and damage at the extreme edges, and some over-painting is visible above the sitter's head. The varnish is a little yellowed. ¹²

Frame

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis, The Hunterian

Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis, frame detail

A Whistlerian Flat frame dating from the 1920s. ¹³ Size: 61.6 x 41.0 x 2.7 cm.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903 and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1958: bequeathed by Miss R. Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow.

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. 475), plate 344, as 'Little Juniper Bud – Lizzie Willis'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Taylor, Hilary, James McNeill Whistler, London, 1978, repr. f. p. 153.

Books, General

• Kelly, Franklin, American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1998, p. 254, repr. fig. 1.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 66) as 'Little Juniper Bud: Lizzie Willis'.
• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 47).
• Glasgow University's Pictures, London, Colnaghi, 1973 (cat. no. 103) repr. pl. 51.
• Pickvance, Ronald, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903): An Exhibition of Works from the University of Glasgow Collection, Nottingham University Art Gallery, Nottingham, 1970 (cat. no. 12).
• Sutton, Denys, and Martin Hopkinson, ホイスラー展. Whistler Exhibition in Japan, Tokyo, 1987 (cat. no. 33).
• 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 (cat. no. 200).
• Andreeva, Galina, and Margaret F. MacDonald, Whistler and Russia, State Tretyakow Gallery, Moscow, 2006, pp. 98, 184 (cat. no. 23), repr. p. 98.

Journals 1906-Present

• Shaw, Edith, and Margaret F. MacInnes [M. F. MacDonald], ‘Four Years with Whistler’, Apollo, vol. 87, March 1968, pp. 198-201, pp. 198-201.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41276.
• Art UK website at https://artuk.org.

Unpublished

• None.

Other

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.