Portrait study of James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903)

Rothenstein was introduced to James McNeill Whistler around 1892 in one of the salons of Henrietta Reubell, at 42 Avenue Gabriel, Paris, where he also met the author, Henry James (William Rothenstein, Men and Memories, London, 1931, p. 81). He had of course encountered Whistler’s work during his first year at the Slade in 1888 and could well already have seen the American painter at one of the private views where the ‘youthful elite’ who ‘cared little for either Morris or Burne-Jones’ gathered. Not long after the salon encounter Rothenstein was invited to Whistler’s apartment at the rue du Bac, and thereafter their paths crossed on several occasions. The most memorable of these occurred one evening when the young painter accompanied Whistler to his studio in rue Notre Dame des Champs and he observed the older artist examining his recent portraits by candlelight. In that poignant moment the thought struck him that ‘even Whistler must often have felt his heart heavy with the sense of failure’ (op.cit, pp..109-110). A second caricature showing Whistler in profile, and of the same period as the present lot, is illustrated op.cit, p. 107.