.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'The present work was commissioned by the millionairess, art patron and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875-1942), who married Harry Payne Whitney in 1896. Painted in Paris during February and March 1914, it is probably set in the elegant house that she and her husband had purchased from Moncure Robinson a couple of months earlier (New York Times, 23 December 1913). Following the completion of this work and her return to New York, Gertrude Payne Whitney started the Whitney Studio Club, in Greenwich Village, which led ultimately to the founding in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Nicholson sketched an early version of the composition, when it included a wolf-hound, in a letter to Ben dated 11 February 1914. The artist was expecting £600 to £700 for the commission, which probably came through Edward Knoblock. The sitter is shown resting on a daybed, caught in a dramatic shaft of light from the partially open curtains. The door is open to the adjoining, sunlit room. The chandelier is spectacular. On 1 April Nicholson wrote again to his son: 'I have just received my cheque from Mrs Whitney which is a splendid one' (TGA 8717/1/1/1639).
This work was attributed to James Pryde by both Friedman and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hence its appearance in the 1922 exhibition James Pryde. Mrs Whitney had purchased Pryde's The Death Bed (c. 1913; now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) around this time, a sale he probably owed to Nicholson's introduction. The disproportionately high ceiling and the draped bed suggest one of Pryde's series of allegorical paintings, The Human Comedy, where a four-poster bed is the setting for life's triumphs and tragedies (mainly the latter). Here Nicholson depicts an elegant lit à la polonaise, and the composition invites comparison with the portrait of Sibbie Hart-Davis from the previous year, in which the subject is also lying on a daybed.' (P. Reed, William Nicholson Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2011, p. 266).
We are very grateful to Patricia Reed for her kind assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Nicholson sketched an early version of the composition, when it included a wolf-hound, in a letter to Ben dated 11 February 1914. The artist was expecting £600 to £700 for the commission, which probably came through Edward Knoblock. The sitter is shown resting on a daybed, caught in a dramatic shaft of light from the partially open curtains. The door is open to the adjoining, sunlit room. The chandelier is spectacular. On 1 April Nicholson wrote again to his son: 'I have just received my cheque from Mrs Whitney which is a splendid one' (TGA 8717/1/1/1639).
This work was attributed to James Pryde by both Friedman and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hence its appearance in the 1922 exhibition James Pryde. Mrs Whitney had purchased Pryde's The Death Bed (c. 1913; now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) around this time, a sale he probably owed to Nicholson's introduction. The disproportionately high ceiling and the draped bed suggest one of Pryde's series of allegorical paintings, The Human Comedy, where a four-poster bed is the setting for life's triumphs and tragedies (mainly the latter). Here Nicholson depicts an elegant lit à la polonaise, and the composition invites comparison with the portrait of Sibbie Hart-Davis from the previous year, in which the subject is also lying on a daybed.' (P. Reed, William Nicholson Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2011, p. 266).
We are very grateful to Patricia Reed for her kind assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.