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The Japanese Dress

Impression: Library of Congress
Library of Congress
(FP-XIX-W576, no. 337)
Number: 371
Date: 1887
Medium: etching
Size: 100 x 68 mm
Signed: butterfly at right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 2
Catalogues: K.337; M.335
Impressions taken from this plate  (2)

KEYWORD

clothing, dress, fashion, model, Japanese, reading, woman seated.

TITLE

There are few references to this etching but both Whistler's and published titles vary only a little:


'The Japanese Dress' (1887, Whistler). 2
'Girl Reading[,] Japanese. Dress' (1890/1892, Beatrice Whistler (1857-1896)). 3
'The Japanese Gown' (1903/1935, possibly Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958)). 4
'The Japanese Dress' (1909, Howard Mansfield (1849-1938)). 5


Whistler's original title, 'The Japanese Dress' was accepted by Mansfield and later cataloguers.

2: Whistler to T. McLean, 12 December 1887, GUW #13017.

3: List, [1890/1892], GUW #12715.

4: Envelope containing copper plate, University of Glasgow.

5: Mansfield 1909[more] (cat. no. 335).

DESCRIPTION

A young woman with her hair mostly covered by a scarf wound round her head, wearing a wide-sleeved robe decorated with oriental patterns, sits on a wooden chair. She faces to the right and is reading a newspaper. Some drapery hangs behind her.

SITTER

Not identified. The model is clearly European, in a studio setting, reading a local newspaper. It is possible the model is one of the Pettigrew sisters, Rose Amy Pettigrew (b. 1872) or Lilian Pettigrew (b. 1870).

DISCUSSION

Etching: c_K337_01
The Arabian m1273, chalk and pastel, 1890/1892,
The Hunterian, GLAHA 46149 .

The same title but not the same subject is seen in a pastel, The Japanese Dress m1227. Whistler collected kimono and oriental embroideries for dressing up his models and his studio. The robe - or one very like it - appears in full colour in the pastels The Japanese Dress m1227 and The Arabian m1273 (which is reproduced above), and similar oriental robes in several pastels dating from about 1888-1892 including The Embroidered Robe m1224, A masked woman m1225, Design for a Mosaic m1226 and The Fortune Teller. 6 It is also represented in a lithograph, dating from 1892/1893, reproduced below.

6: r.: The Fortune Teller; v.: A nude lying on a sofa m1274.

Etching: c_K337_02
Draped Model, Standing by a Sofa c075, Lithograph, 1892/1893,
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow (49225).