Study for "Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth" (recto); Study for "Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland" (verso)

1867·Pastel (recto), and black chalk with touches of pink and white pastel (verso), on brown wove paper·22.9 × 12.3 cm (9 1/16 × 4 7/8 in.)

<p>Whistler created this sketch in preparation for a large-format painting. Made around the same time as the portrait of his mother, this drawing shows its subject, Mrs. Louis Huth, standing in front of a patterned textile and oriented to the viewer nearly in full profile. We know from a letter that Anna Whistler wrote late in 1871 that she tried to model for her son in a standing position but found it too physically demanding. No similar preparatory study for the painting survives; since Whistler lived with his mother, he had little need of a memory aid sketch like this one. He could paint his model directly from life any day of the week, except Sundays, when she demurred for religious observance.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1867
Medium: Pastel (recto), and black chalk with touches of pink and white pastel (verso), on brown wove paper
Dimensions: 22.9 × 12.3 cm (9 1/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: James McNeill Whistler

Artist

James McNeill Whistler

Painting

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake".

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

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