The Japanese Dress | ||
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.
'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](../../images/etch_t/c_K337_01_001.jpg)
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](../../images/etch_t/c_K337_02_001.jpg)
Draped Model, Standing by a Sofa c075, Lithograph, 1892/1893,
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow (49225).