This information is ©
The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow 2010
"The Artist's Niece" 1849
(oil)
CRE WHISTLER, James McNeill; (American; 1834-1903)
Materials:
Oil on paper
Dimensions:
8.0 x 7.5
Frame:
Dark wood, 48.4 x 35.6 x 1.2
Marks:
None
References:
(1) Plate 1 YOUNG, Andrew McLaren, MACDONALD, Margaret F., SPENCER, Robin and MILES, Hamish 1980 The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven and London
Notes:
Whistler's earliest surviving oil is a portrait of Annie Haden (1848-1937), who later became Mrs Charles Thynne. She was the eldest daughter of Whistler's half-sister Deborah and her husband Francis Seymour Haden, a surgeon and etcher. This work is also framed with an 1845 portrait of Whistler's mother, Anna Matilda McNeill (1804-1881), by the British miniaturist Thomas Wright (1792-1849), a tracing of his mother's sandal and a lock of his hair at the age of two.
Two drawings of Annie Haden as a baby, executed in 1848, are also in this collection (See GLAHA 46005/46006). She also appears in later etchings and oils such as: "At the Piano" (YMSM 24) in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, USA and "Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room" (YMSM 34) in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA.
Another supposed portrait of her is now in the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. It was lent to the 1905 Paris Memorial Exhibition (31) by M. Jerome Doucet, but it is now no longer accepted as being by Whistler or indeed of depicting Annie Haden.
Birnie Philip Gift, 1935, not lendable.
Keywords:
CHILD : PORTRAIT : ANNIE HARRIET HADEN : NIECE : WHISTLER CENTENARY : EARLY WORK :
