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)

Prints and Drawings

c. 1872

James McNeill Whistler
American, 1834-1903

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.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Title: 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)
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1867–1877
Medium: Pastel (recto), and black chalk with touches of pink and white pastel (verso), on brown wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed recto, right, in black chalk: [artist's butterfly monogram]; inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: "8 ⅞ x 4 (illegible)" (upside down); inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: "R5307" (upside down); inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: "32.211" (upside down)
Dimensions: 22.9 × 12.3 cm (9 1/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Walter S. Brewster
Reference Number: 1933.211
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/113070/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, Report for the Year 1933 (Chicago, 1933), p. 35.
Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler (New Haven, 1980), pp. 75-76, under no. 125.
Katharine A. Lochnan, The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler (New Haven, 1984), pp. 161-163, pl. 195.
Branka Nakanishi, “A Symphony Reexamined: An Unpublished Study for Whistler’s Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland,” The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 18:2 (Chicago, 1992), pp. 156-167, figs. 1, 4.
Martha Tedeschi, “Forward,” The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 18: 2 (Chicago, 1992), pp. 108-111, fig. 4.
Richard Dorment and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler, exh. cat. (London, 1994), p. 149.
Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels, and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 165-167, cat. 454 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24:1, Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography (Chicago, 1998), p. 24, fig. 5.
Linda Merrill, The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography (Washington, D.C., New Haven, and London, 1998), p. 131.
The Broad Spectrum: Studies in Materials, Techniques, and Conservation of Color on Paper, eds. Harriet K. Stratis and Britt Salvesen (London, 2002), p.37, fig. 1.26 (ill.).
Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon, ed. Margaret MacDonald (Burlington, VT, 2003), p.38-40 (ill.).
Margaret F. MacDonald, Susan Grace Galassi, Aileen Ribeiro, and Patricia de Montfort, Whistler, Women, and Fashion, exh. cat. (New Haven and London, 2003), p. 111.
Dreams and Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture in the David and Celia Hilliard Collection, ed. Suzanne Folds McCullagh with the assistance of Melissa L. Gustin, exh. cat. (Chicago, 2013), p. 227, fig. 62.1 (ill.).

Chicago, Albert Roullier Galleries, “Original Drawings by Old and Modern Masters.” March 7-21, 1921, p. 5, cat. 44, as “Sketch of a Lady’s Dress.”
Chicago, Home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Brewster, “Special View for the benefit of Chicago Public School Art Society of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter S. Brewster,” January 20–22, 1933, cat. 37.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Summer Exhibitions, James McNeill Whistler - Paintings, Prints, Whistleriana, July 20-October 29, 1939, no. 9.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Pastels, Watercolors, Etchings, Lithographs,” January 13-February 25, 1968, cat. 53; traveled to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y., March 17-April 28, 1968.
Berlin, Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen, “James McNeill Whistler, (1834-1903),” October 1-November 24, 1969, cat. 221.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography,” June 13-August 30, 1998, pp. 24 and 30, cat. 15, fig. 5; traveled to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, October 2, 1998-January 3, 1999.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon Returns to Chicago,” March 4–May 21, 2017 (no cat.).

Probably, Mrs. Louise Huth (née Helen Rose Ogilvy; later Mrs. Archibald Barwell How), acquired directly from the artist, 1872 [MacDonald 1995]. Robert Dunthorne, London and Liverpool [MacDonald 1995]. Possibly, Edwin Thompson, Liverpool; sold, London, Christie’s, February 27, 1925, lot 101, as “Lady in Black Dress,” to Brown and Philips, London [MacDonald 1995]. Possibly, D. C. Thomson, London, 1927 [MacDonald 1995]. Sold by Albert Roullier to Walter S. Brewster (1872-1954), Chicago, June 2, 1927 [invoice]; given to the Art Institute, 1933.

Cat. 14 Study for “Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth” (recto), c. 1872

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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)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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