UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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