The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip dates from between 1900 and 1902. ¹

According to the Pennells, on 14 July 1900 Whistler ‘showed us some of the things he has been doing lately – his portrait of Miss Philip in hat and boa close round her throat.' ² It was probably in the summer of 1900 that the writer Annulet Andrews (1864-1944) (then Miss Ohl) visited Whistler’s studio in London and met the sitter, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958),

'… in that great barn of a London studio which you reach by an inclosed glass corridor, a great, gray, homely workshop it was ... Several people were there, among them his sister-in-law, Miss Philip, whose portrait he had just completed – a slim, sleek, thorough-bred English girl, in a glossy black dress, her hair and eyebrows of the same shining blackness. In the portrait she wore a picturesque black hat. The haughty, high-lifted head, the expression, treatment, arrangement, were more suggestive of Velasquez than any other Whistler portrait I have ever seen.'' ³

However, a note on the back of the stretcher says the portrait was painted in 1902 in Whistler's Fitzroy Street studio; this was recorded by the art dealer Harold Wright (1885-1961), and was based on information from the sitter, R. Birnie Philip. It was probably the ‘portrait of Miss Philip’ seen by the Pennells in Whistler’s studio on 24 April 1902. ⁴

Images

Subject

Titles

Suggested titles include:

• ‘The Black Hat’ (1960, Arts Council). ⁵
• 'The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip' (1980, YMSM). ⁶

'The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip' is the preferred title.

Description

The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, The Hunterian

A half-length portrait of a woman in vertical format. She is in three-quarter view to right. She has dark brown hair and eyes, and wears a black hat with a medium size brim, a black coat with a wide collar and black fur round her neck. She poses against a dark olive green/brown background.

Sitter

Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, photograph, GUL Whistler PH1/34

Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), Whistler's youngest sister-in-law, his ward, executrix and model for many portraits, including The Jade Necklace y478, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip Standing y479, Portrait of Miss Philip in Black y480, The Black Hat - Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip y535 and Portrait of Miss Philip y553.

Technique

Technique

The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, The Hunterian

This is painted very thinly indeed on an unusually coarse canvas, uneven and slubby, with about 10 threads/cm. The weave is prominent in the face and background. There is no priming. Oil has soaked into about 3 mm of the canvas, beyond the end of each brushstroke.

Dr Joyce H. Townsend notes, 'There is no underdrawing for the face. The same black pigment was used for the fur collar and the hat, but it was a different pigment (a brown) for the dark eyes.' Transmitted light revealed that the areas of thinnest paint were in the face – on the area around her eyes and the whites of the eyes, the end of her nose, her upper lip and chin – as well as on an area along the lowest edge of the canvas. ⁷ The top of her lip is precisely defined by a sharp-edged stroke of pink flesh coloured paint. The black costume is painted carefully and smoothly, but there are alterations to the shoulders. Dr Townsend adds:

'At the lower edge, some brushstrokes stop several centimetres short of the tacking margin. The rest of the canvas is fully covered in thinned paint, the face and the whites of the eyes being the most thinly painted areas. There is little or no rubbing. Some of the thickest canvas threads look very lightly abraded, but this might simply be wiping of paint from a canvas already saturated with oil. ...

There are no retouches or damages at all. This is an excellent example of an unaltered and little changed canvas painting by Whistler.' ⁸

It is possible, however, that some of the green areas in the background were reworked in 1902.

Conservation History

According to Dr Townsend, it is on 'unlined canvas on its original stretcher, with cusping at all edges, but less along the bottom as though it has been trimmed by 8-10 mm at most. It is unprimed, and ultra-violet examination suggests it has no significant amount of glue size either. … There is a natural resin varnish overall, very glossy, applied within the frame. Beneath this is another natural resin varnish covering the whole sight area.' ⁹

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler’s studio on his death in 1903 and bequeathed to the sitter, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1958: bequeathed by her 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. 535), plate 361, as 'The Black Hat – Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• Andrews, Annulet, 'Cousin Butterfly: Being some Memories of Whistler', Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, vol. 73, no. 435, March 1904, pp. 318-27, at p. 325.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• MacDonald, Margaret F., Susan Galassi, Aileen Ribeiro, and Patricia de Montfort, Whistler, Women and Fashion, New Haven and London, 2003, p. 208.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 279, 291.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, pp. 77, 235.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 78) as ‘The Black Hat’.
• Sweet, Frederick A. (ed.), James McNeill Whistler, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, 1968 (cat. no. 51).
• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 60).
• 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. 19).
• Young, A. McLaren, Glasgow University's Pictures, Colnaghi, London, 1973 (cat. no. 113).
• ホイスラー展. Whistler Exhibition in Japan, Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo; Shizuoka Prefectural Museum, Shizuoka, 1986 (cat. no. 42).
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, p. 247 note 63 (not in exhibition).
• James McNeill Whistler: selected works from the Hunterian Art Gallery, Dixon Gallery, 2004-2005; Taft Museum of Art, 2005; Philbrook Museum of Art, 2005; Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2005-2006; Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 2006; Nevada Museum of Art, 2007; Tyler Museum of Art, 2007 (cat. no. 9).
• Ayako Ono, ホイッスラー展. James McNeill Whistler Retrospective, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyōto, 2014, and Yokohama Museum of Art, 2014–2015 (cat. no. 38).

Journals 1906-Present

• Zoff, Otto, ‘Eine Whistler-Ausstellung in New York’ in Das Kunstwerk, vol. 14, no. 7, 1961, pp. 26–29, repr.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41289.
• ArtUk website at https://artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 235).

Other

• Hetherington, Sir Hector, Principal's Letter to Graduates, University of Glasgow, August 1958, repr. f.p. 3.