Count Robert de Montesquiou

This lithograph after Whistler's famous portrait of the Comte de Montesquiou, Arrangement in Black and Gold, 1891-92 (The Frick Collection, New York) was historically thought to be by the artist himself. Commissioned by the periodical, Gazette des beaux-arts, Whistler began work on a lithographic version in 1894. It is now known that both Whistler and his wife Beatrice, an accomplished artist in her own right, executed transfer drawings after the painting, and that two of the four versions known are in her hand. Whistler was deeply dissatisfied with his own prints and abandoned the project. Beatrice's versions, which lack the butterfly signature, are characterised by their clarity and vigorous down strokes, accentuating the subject's tall, aesthetic frame.

Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) was a French aesthete and dandy, reputedly the inspiration for Jean des Esseintes, the decadent hero of Joris-Karl Huysman's novel À rebours. He would author the catalogue raisonne of the drypoints of Paul César Helleu (see lots 50 & 54).