The Transition from Line to Paint in Whistler’s Early Oil Portraits, 1855–9

Arriving in Paris in November 1855, at the age of twenty-one, James McNeill Whistler entered a cosmopolitan capital that had become a centre for international artistic exchange. The city offered a dense ecosystem of private ateliers, studio models and informal bohemian networks in which the young painter encountered both academic discipline and emergent realism. His four years in Paris marked a recalibration of his visual habits, which had been shaped on both sides of the Atlantic – initially in New England, where the artist grew up, then in St Petersburg, London and New York.

Whistler’s portrait La Mère Gérard (1) 1858–9 (YMSM 026), hereafter La Mère Gérard, marks a formative moment in his artistic development in which Anglo-American traditions of direct likeness and restrained iconography give way to a newly assured Parisian realism.1 The portrait of Gérard, a flower seller and recurrent model for Whistler, was the first oil painting that he exhibited in public, in 1859, establishing him as a serious artist.2 Between his arrival in Paris in 1855, when he lacked much formal training in oil painting, and his exhibition of the portrait, lies a critical interval during which Whistler technically explored, rather than mastered, oil as medium.

A survey of Whistler’s early paintings in oil from 1849 to 1859, undertaken as part of the conservation research project Whistler’s Finish, brings into focus the dating of another portrait in oil.3 Head of a Peasant Woman, here dated 1856–7 (YMSM 021), a half-length portrait of an anonymous working class woman, was first exhibited in 1905 at Whistler’s memorial exhibitions in London and Paris.4 The artist’s friends and biographers, Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell, placed the painting broadly within the years 1855–8, a dating that has largely persisted.5 However, modern cataloguing has treated the chronology as unsettled, with Margaret F. MacDonald and Grischka Petri noting that ‘there is some doubt about the artist, and therefore about the date’. They point out that Whistler’s early work ‘can vary quite considerably in technique’ and describe Head of a Peasant Woman as ‘comparable to some of Whistler’s late panels … in its level of finish and treatment of paint’.6

Head of a Peasant Woman is thought to have been handed down from Whistler’s great-niece through the Winans family, who were related to the Whistlers by marriage.7 The uncertainty regarding the date of the portrait has rested primarily on the work’s surface characteristics and small size.8 Head of a Peasant Woman was compared in size to all paintings on panel given in MacDonald and Petri’s online catalogue raisonné. The survey found that Whistler used wood panel supports only during the 1850s and 1890s, and of these, just two from 1850s and three from the 1890s correlated closely in size.9 The pigments identified in Head of a Peasant Woman recur across Whistler’s career and therefore permit either period. The dating of Head of a Peasant Woman has been guided by material evidence from comparator portraits made in three distinct phases of the artist’s practice, from 1855 to early 1857; early 1857 to 1859; and the panels of the 1890s.

Examination of Head of a Peasant Woman reveals that the support, preparation layers, underdrawing, paint application and behaviour of the paint film align most closely with Whistler’s early practice in Paris in 1856–7. Comparison with La Mère Gérard complicates this chronology, as the painting technique and stylistic differences between the two portraits suggest a sudden leap in artistic development. However, research into Whistler’s early art practice and technical information from his oil portraits reveal a gradual evolution in painting technique from early 1857 onwards. Head of a Peasant Woman preserves a moment of exploration, when Whistler’s oil painting functioned largely as an extension of his draughtsmanship, before the increasingly autonomous handling of paint that culminated in La Mère Gérard, and long before his artistic and technical maturity of the 1890s.

Transition from line to paint

The drawing-led construction of Head of a Peasant Woman reflects habits learned by Whistler during his early years in New England, Russia and Europe before his arrival in Paris. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, Whistler moved with his family to Stonington, Connecticut, in 1837, and then to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1840. It was during these early years that Whistler first encountered regional portraiture, which functioned not only as a form of artistic representation but also as a means of affirming civic identity, regional ties and familial continuity.10 Between 1840 and 1842 Whistler’s family were neighbours with the portraitist Chester Harding (1792–1866), placing the young Whistler in direct proximity to contemporary portrait practice.11 Through portraits of his father, George Washington Whistler (1800–1849), Whistler encountered Harding’s dark-toned modelling and Henry Inman’s (1801–1846) tonal discipline (figs.1 and 2).12

Rather than emphasising painterly flourish, these portraits provided a visual grammar of legibility, restrained gesture and socially coded detail that persisted in Whistler’s early Parisian figures. Inman’s portrait Major George Washington Whistler c.1843 is similar in size to Head of a Peasant Woman, painted in a comparable technique and also on a solid support.13 The modelling is built over a light-toned preparatory ground, the paint is smooth and thin layers of supressed brushwork are used to blend contours, for example to model the face.14 In both paintings likeness is prioritised over gesture, as seen in the finely blended brushwork mirroring the drawn forms beneath (fig.3).

Whistler’s subsequent training reinforced these methods. In 1843 his family left the United States for Russia, following his father’s appointment to the St Petersburg-Moscow railway, remaining there until 1849. During that time Whistler made extended visits to several countries in Europe, including England. In Russia Whistler initially received private drawing tutelage from Aleksandr Koritskii (1818–1866), and from 1845 attended drawing lessons at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St Petersburg, where he encountered a European academic system in which tonal modelling and draughtsmanship were inseparable. During this period Whistler visited family in London, where his graphic vocabulary was extended through the art collection of his brother-in-law Francis Seymour Haden (1818–1910), which included family portraiture and etchings by Hogarth and Rembrandt. Whistler’s enthusiasm for art is recorded in letters to his father, in which he recounted gallery visits or the painting techniques he had observed.15 William Boxall (1800–1879), who painted Whistler’s portrait at fourteen, later took him to Hampton Court to visit Raphael’s cartoons, reinforcing the importance of drawing as a foundation for painting.16

Whistler returned to Connecticut following his father’s death in 1849, and entered the military academy at West Point, New York, two years later.17 During his time at the academy his aptitude for drawing was recognised but only extended to watercolour for making copies or maps.18 The painter Robert Walter Weir (1803–1889), who taught drawing at the academy, promoted clarity, proportion and tonal coherence over bravura handling, telling students ‘You must do all you can to paint a good head’.19 These lessons extended beyond the classroom to Weir’s studio, where the young Whistler would have been exposed to portraits commencing with a light-coloured ground, drawing in graphite, followed by blocking in the background (fig.4).20 This reinforced a visual language already familiar to Whistler, helping to consolidate an understanding of portraiture grounded in formal economy and composure. Shaped by these early influences Whistler returned to Europe permanently at age twenty-one.

Early oil paintings

In contrast to the abundance of sketches he made in his youth, there are few known early oil paintings by Whistler. Works in oil from 1849 to early 1857 are represented by a small and fragmentary group of unexhibited portraits or lost works, including portraits painted before he left the United States.21 Of the early portraits that survive, Whistler’s handling of the oil paint suggest a continued reliance on drawing, using the brush as he would a pencil. His earliest surviving oil sketch, a portrait of his niece from 1849 (YMSM 001; fig.5) is naive in its paint handling, suggesting experimentation rather than fluency. The Fishwife 1855 (YMSM 006; fig.6), which is cautiously handled with blended, smooth paint application, closely mirrors the pen and ink drawing of the same subject (fig.7).22 These works demonstrate that Whistler had attempted oil portraiture before Paris, but at this stage was far from mastering the medium. The Pennells noted that Whistler painted a ‘number of portraits’ in his early years in Paris but ‘some it would be impossible to trace’.23 Three oil portraits are recorded as painted in 1856–7: Portrait of Madame H. Aubrée (YMSM 007), Portrait of Captain Williams (YMSM 009) and a self-portrait (YMSM 008).24 Although presumed lost, they correspond to the artist’s initial period of development in oil. In this context, Head of a Peasant Woman is not an anomaly – its small scale, panel support and restrained handling are consistent with this early phase.

Painting Head of a Peasant Woman

Head of a Peasant Woman is a small oil portrait on a thin, hand-sawn softwood panel that retains its original format (fig.8).25 The ground is light in tone and examination reveals a carefully structured preparation. There are two distinct preparation layers extending across the painting surface. Analysis confirms lead white, bone black, synthetic ultramarine, brown earth and iron oxides in both layers, materials consistent with Whistler’s broader practice.26 The first layer, which dominates the X-radiograph (fig.9), is an artist-applied pale blue-grey ground brushed vertically, filling the wood grain to create a smoother surface. A similar artist-applied ground is found on an oil portrait from the 1890s, Study of a Girl’s Head and Shoulders 1896–7 (YMSM 486; Art Institute of Chicago) although both its colour and the handling of the upper paint layers markedly differ.27 Small drips along the edge of Head of a Peasant Woman indicate the ground was applied in a fluid but substantial layer, using a loaded brush, while the panel was laid flat.

On top of the ground a thinner, cool grey-blue imprimatura was applied.28 Now visible primarily in losses at the edges and in small passages of the kerchief, proper left earring and left eye, it functions locally as a highlight (fig.10), akin to his technique used in watercolour, and not used as an optically active mid-tone as seen in Whistler’s later works. The darker coloured background consists of two layers applied wet-in-wet. Cross-sections made from paint samples show that the background was initially blocked in with a darker, medium-rich layer and then reworked by applying another background layer before it had dried (fig.11), likely causing the localised drying cracks. The background paint does not extend into the figure, except at its edges, suggesting the sitter was left in reserve.

The handling of the paint reinforces this disciplined construction. Whistler modelled the portrait using small, repetitive, wet-in-wet strokes of thin, opaque and semi-opaque paint, working them until the brushwork was supressed (fig.12). Its unified surface is constructed with controlled repetitive cross-hatched strokes that merge into a smooth paint, notably on the hair and in the black neck ribbon (fig.13). Score marks, perhaps made with an etching tool, are present across the panel and used deliberately, for example in the transition from the kerchief to the background or in seemingly random locations (fig.14).

The flesh is built up as semi-opaque layers over the imprimatura, and the textured ground is only perceptible in the thinnest areas of the face (fig.15b).29 The painting’s ‘thinness’ is therefore relative, as raking light shows that Whistler deliberately unified the surface, manipulating the opaque paint to produce an overall even and blended film, rather than an optically merged field as with his much later portraits (fig.15a).30

Close inspection of Head of a Peasant Woman shows a carefully executed graphite underdrawing, mapping the oval of the head and placement of features, closely followed in paint (fig.16). Infrared reflectography (IRR) reveals adjustments to the chin and neckline indicate an earlier, more rounded form (fig.17). Only the earring and patterned kerchief were handled with greater freedom; otherwise there is little evidence of gesture. Taken together, the layered preparation, cool tonal ground, underdrawing, suppressed brushwork and additive modelling signal an early experimental phase with oil paint grounded by Whistler’s understanding of form organised by line, tone and controlled transition.

Head of a Peasant Woman shares a visual language with Whistler’s works on paper from the same period. In both technique and tonal discipline, it echoes the only two surviving works by Whistler dated 1856, a the pen sketch Reclining Lady (M.0214; fig.18a) and a watercolour portrait of Whistler’s neighbour in Paris, Dr Henry Hudson (M.0216; fig.19).31 In both works form is articulated incrementally rather than through emphatic handling. At high magnification, the paint in Head of a Peasant Woman can be seen to have been laid in fine, parallel micro-hatching strokes with a brush (fig.20), mirroring the carefully applied hatching and repetitive fine lines in Reclining Lady (fig.18b). In its composition and handling, Head of a Peasant Woman, which has been described as ‘thin as watercolour’, also parallels that of Dr Henry Hudson.32

On the watercolour Whistler initially toned the white paper with an overall wash, much as an imprimatura operates in oil painting. Just as with Head of Peasant a Woman, the toned wash serves to form some of the highlights when left in reserve. The modelling then accumulates through blended semi-opaque layers and thin successive layers applied wet-in-wet and, as MacDonald has noted, the ‘watercolour was worked up into a soft and even finish’.33 As with Head of a Peasant Woman, the shadow for the cheek is applied in one stroke wet over dry with remarkable similarity, as too is the overall facial construction (fig.21). With its modelling anchored in draughtsmanship and watercolour, rather than the assured painterly applications seen after 1857, Head of a Peasant Woman aligns technically with this restrained phase in Whistler’s early practice of 1856–7.

The designation ‘peasant’ (paysanne) in the title complicates the interpretation of the sitter. MacDonald’s and Petri’s assertion that the woman ‘was not, judging by her dress, actually a peasant’, is supported by her attire. For example, the subject’s neat hair, much of which is revealed, her white patterned kerchief, the item of jewellery at her neck and her modest hoop earrings align less with provincial rural dress of the time, than with the styles worn by working women in mid-century Paris.34 The sitter also wears a mantle or jacket worn over a dress and white cotton shift, again more typical attire for urban working women, who at the time could supplement their income by modelling for artists. As dress and working garments of working-class women changed little over time, dress is unable to narrow dating.35 The sitter is older than the grisettes (young working-class women) described by the Pennells and aligns more plausibly with the wider spectrum of middle-aged working women living in the Left Bank of Paris, the district frequented by Whistler and many other young artists and students.36

Technical comparison with La Mère Gérard

The most instructive comparison for Head of a Peasant Woman lies in Whistler’s oil portraits from early 1857 to 1859, which are also typically set against dark or neutral backgrounds. The most similar in composition is La Mère Gérard (fig.22), which the artist described in January 1859 as undertaken ‘from Nature’ and considered ‘to be the best thing I have yet done’.37 The portrait was first exhibited publicly in François Bonvin’s studio in 1859, where exhibitions formed part of wider realist practice that the art critic Jules Champfleury characterised as ‘a refuge for those who do not find justice at the Salon’.38

Dated to 1858–9 and executed on compressed fibreboard, La Mère Gérard bears Whistler’s angled red signature, typical of his earliest exhibited works. Like Head of a Peasant Woman, it is a small, half-length portrait set against a dark background, with light concentrated on the forehead, cheeks and headdress.39 In both portraits the character of the female sitter is conveyed without sentimentality. Gérard is identified by an enlarged pansy painted in chrome yellow, mixed with vermilion at its centre (fig.23a).40 She wears a short, black woollen coat open over her brown or mixed fabric skirt, while her headdress consists of a small fluted linen cap worn under a larger cap with two untied streamers. She may possibly be wearing a black woollen shawl, a common item of clothing for flower sellers and elderly women.41 She holds a green bag used to hold her flowers, akin to representations of her in etchings by Whistler. Both portraits, urban and realist in subject, retain a compositional clarity recalling Whistler’s American influences, in which portrait painters presented half-length figures against neutral or dark grounds and prioritised recognisable likeness.42 The difference between the two paintings lies in the handling of paint – crucially, in La Mère Gérard, Whistler no longer follows the drawn design but increasingly shapes the composition in paint alone.

Examination of the paintings under raking light reveals the technical shift between the surfaces of the two paintings (fig.24). Head of a Peasant Woman presents a smooth, even surface with supressed brushwork on the relatively non-absorbent panel and has minor compositional alterations. Conversely, Whistler’s use of a loaded brush to paint La Mère Gérard has resulted in a textured surface, with broader strokes articulating facial planes, folds of drapery and highlights that are placed decisively on the headdress (fig.23b). Dense passages of paint obscure the preparatory drawing, with compositional adjustments having been made during the painting process.

The presence of pentimenti – modifications or alterations – is more extensive in La Mère Gérard where Whistler adjusted forms with sweeping strokes. Passages rich with lead white, rendered bright white in the X-radiograph, indicate vigorous brushstrokes where Whistler reworked the areas in the painting (fig.25); both hands were originally included in the composition and the left forearm was previously more exposed. Whistler also shifted Gérard’s proper left shoulder and rotated her head to face the viewer more directly, placing the painting more firmly within mid-century Parisian realism and a displaying Baudelairean commitment to the unidealised subject.43

In comparison to the ground and imprimatura found on Head of a Peasant Woman, the single layer of ground for La Mère Gérard comprises mostly lead white and bone black. However, instead of brown earth and synthetic ultramarine, as in the Hunterian panel, it was modified with yellow and brown ochre to create a warmer, darker mid-grey, applied in broad vertical strokes directly onto the absorbent, unsized support.44 The subsequent modelling layers vary visibly in thickness, with four applications, some wet-in-wet, for the background (fig.26). The initial dark background layer was likely used to block in at an early stage leaving the figure in reserve, as with Head of a Peasant Woman. Material analysis confirms closely related pigment use in both paintings.45 Significantly, the final background layer is consistent, linking the portraits to one another by shared mixtures of coarse bone black, brown ochre, yellow ochre (or synthetic yellow iron oxide) and vermilion.

Further, a copper-based green, likely emerald green, appears in the first background layer of Head of a Peasant Woman and in the cloak of La Mère Gérard. Cobalt blue is present in both works, mixed with bone black and iron oxides to make darker passages cooler in tone. The pigments used for facial modelling align in both paintings and include lead white, bone black and red ochre. Whistler uses a mix of lead white and red ochre for the lips in both portraits, slightly intensified on Head of a Peasant Woman with the addition of a small amount of vermilion.

In addition to the use of pigments, there are common features in Whistler’s two portraits that suggest a similarity of hand. The narrow upper lips, almond-shaped eyes, pupil placement and warm pink and peach flesh tones align in their distribution of highlights and shadows (fig.27). The methods for modelling the translucent fabrics are shared across both works, with thin scumbles applied over exposed preparation layers or impasted lead white.46 Both portraits also exhibit localised drying cracks (fig.28); in La Mère Gérard this is more pronounced where multiple background layers have been applied.47 Varying in severity, they signal Whistler’s technical experimentation across his 1850s portraits. La Mère Gérard (2) 1858–9 (YMSM 027; fig.29a) exhibits extreme drying cracks in local areas across the painting (fig.29b).

Conditions for Whistler’s early technical evolution

This technical progress corresponds with documented developments in Whistler’s training. Soon after his arrival in Paris in November 1855 he enrolled in drawing classes at the École Impériale Spéciale de Dessin. Seven months later, in June 1856, he began his formal instruction in oils in the atelier of Charles Gleyre (1806–1874), who valued strong drawing and refined composition in oil paint, as well as artistic individuality.48 Gleyre delayed students’ access to colour until their draughtsmanship was secure, and he emphasised working from memory, preparing the palette in advance and visualising the whole composition before execution. Like the American tradition to which Whistler had been exposed, Gleyre’s atelier favoured the use of light-coloured grounds, while his teaching reflected the academic principles of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), emphasising precise draftsmanship, controlled modeling and systematic paint application.49 This was not a discipline Whistler consistently sustained, as he sometimes prepared his canvases with grey washes to reduce the glare, a practice that becomes increasingly evident in his works from 1858.50

Gleyre’s own approach to portraiture was one of restrained gravity. This is particularly evident in his mid-career Portrait de l’artiste 1841 (fig.30), which presents the artist against a muted background, turned slightly towards the viewer and with a steady, introspective gaze. The subdued palette, dark jacket and controlled lighting project sobriety and professional seriousness. His features are carefully modelled and devoid of overt flourish, qualities that initially shaped Whistler’s developing portraiture. Gleyre’s atelier thus provided the conditions in which Head of a Peasant Woman could emerge, and through Whistler’s material experimentation that La Mère Gérard followed. The paintings represent adjacent stages in his early practice, moving from line-led containment towards increasingly confident painterly construction.

The transition in Whistler’s technique unfolded alongside his sustained practice of copying. Whistler’s first known copy in oil is of Ingres’s Roger délivrant Angélique 1819, which he painted from early 1857 (YMSM 011; Hunterian; fig.31) soon after entering Gleyre’s atelier. Over a white ground, paint is characterised by smooth, thin but carefully blended strokes (fig.32).51 The tonal transitions are softened, and the modelling adheres closely to drawn contours in graphite, visible on the foot and toes. Although on a different scale, the handling aligns with that of Head of a Peasant Woman, and shows Whistler consolidating his oil technique through control with only a few areas lightly impasted and more gestural.

From 1857 onwards Whistler’s development accelerated as his milieu widened to encompass a Franco-British circle of realist artists. Among them were Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), whom with Whistler would later form the Société des Trois.52 Travel also sharpened his artistic thinking. The pen-and-wash studies Whistler produced during a Rhineland walking tour in the summer of 1858, which promoted tonal mass over enclosing contours, were soon followed by the artist’s well-received Twelve Etchings from Nature 1858, known as the French Set.53 The combination of expanded artistic exchange and a sustained period of copying from old masters at the Musée Impérial du Louvre and Musée du Luxembourg in Paris loosened Whistler’s line and bolstered his confidence in oil as a medium. Although none of his copies from this period were portraits, copying functioned as technical inquiry, and its relevance lay in the study of paint handling. As Fantin-Latour observed: ‘Whistler copies not to sell reproductions, but to see how these fellows made their pictures, a much more serious enterprise’.54 At the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester in September 1857, Whistler encountered Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading 1655 (Duke of Buccleuch Collection), The Standard Bearer 1636 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and other old master paintings by Velázquez, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer and Thomas Gainsborough, and these lessons in observation become materially visible in the portraits he painted after 1857.55 In addition to making copies, Whistler’s focus gradually shifted to portraiture, from the small artist prepared panel found on Head of Peasant Woman to the larger commercially prepared canvases painted from 1858, indicating his development from student towards professional artist.56

Technical development in oil portraiture, 1857–60

Whistler’s progression in his early oil paintings is materially traceable: the supressed brushwork and drawing dominance of the earlier portraits evolves into an increasingly autonomous handling of paint. Based on the technical information, the proposed chronology for the early Paris portraits begins in 1856–7 with Head of a Peasant Woman then moves through 1857–60 with Portrait of Whistler with a Hat 1858 (YMSM 023; fig.33), Head of an Old Man Smoking 1858 (YMSM 025; fig.34), La Mère Gérard (2), La Mère Gérard and finishing with Whistler Smoking 1859–60, (YMSM 009; fig.35). Indicative of Whistler’s developing artistic status, canvas stamps were found on the 1857–9 portraits, with commercially prepared grounds sourced from colour makers, such as ‘Bovard’ in Paris on Old Man Smoking and Portrait of Whistler with a Hat, and ‘Brown’ in London on At the Piano 1858–9 (YMSM 0024; Taft Museum, Cincinnati). Across these portraits the preparation layer tones shift from light cooler tones to darker warmer tones and, as seen in infra-reflectography (IRR), reliance on underdrawing decreases as the composition is more confidently worked out in the paint (fig.36). Increasingly, the palette darkens, passages are impasted and the brushwork becomes more expressive exemplified clearly in raking light (fig.37).

In Portrait of Whistler with a Hat, a commercially applied yellow-white preparation layer functions as a visible mid-tone in the mouth, nose and eyes, which is a development from its use for highlights on Head of a Peasant Woman.57 This technique of leaving the imprimatura visible reduces in Head of an Old Man Smoking painted later that year, and in La Mère Gérard the imprimatura is not visible on the surface at all, the grey mid-tone instead being worked in on top (fig.38). The paint in Portrait of Whistler with a Hat has been described as a smooth paste of ‘uniform brownish color’, with the ‘brushwork free’ across the face and neck (fig.39).58 The background was established with ‘a lighter brown-red which was covered with a layer of dark green with lighter modulations’, reminiscent of the colour and double preparation layers in Head of a Peasant Woman, which is closer to this portrait in the chronology.59

In Head of an Old Man Smoking the colour has darkened to a warm grey imprimatura, the brushwork is looser and more varied, and the thin background contrasts with heavily impastoed passages used to ‘sculpt’ the face and shirt (fig.40).60 These changes mark a progression from the blended containment of Head of a Peasant Woman towards painterly construction and authority of the old masters he increasingly studied from early 1857 onwards, evident in their Rembrandtesque character.61

In addition to drying cracks, all the 1858–9 portraits were described in twentieth-century condition reports as ‘lumpy’, the result of Whistler’s use of ‘oil with resinous content’ or ‘bitumen’, with the exception of Head of an Old Man Smoking. Until very recently and without any materials analysis, paint drying problems, such as wide cracks, were often ascribed to bitumen, which was occasionally used in paint formulations at the time.62 The lumpy textures that characterise the surfaces in these post-1857 works range in severity from Portrait of Whistler with a Hat, where the paint is ‘irregular in consistency and lumps can be seen’, to the extreme surface texture found in La Mère Gérard (2) (see fig.29) and At the Piano.63 Paint that has wrinkled during the drying process appears for the first time in Whistler’s work in Whistler Smoking (fig.41). Although it does not manifest in the other 1850s portraits, this effect has been found in his paintings of the 1860s.64 In addition, the paint handling in Whistler Smoking mirrors the stiff, dragged brushwork on La Mère Gérard (fig.42). These technical aspects, alongside comparison with Whistler’s early self-portraits, situate Whistler Smoking more comfortably towards the end of the 1850s, into 1860, most likely later than its current dating to 1856.

Portrait of Whistler with a Hat depicts a younger man, suggesting a date closer to an etched self-portrait from 1857 (G5; figs.43 and 44).65 By contrast, the dry-point Whistler with Hat 1859 (G44; fig.45 and 46), in which he appears older, with longer hair and more developed facial hair, corresponds more closely to that of Whistler Smoking (fig.45a–c). MacDonald and Petri catalogue the painting as ‘1856/1860’, noting that ‘Whistler looks a little older than his earliest etched self-portrait’, and suggest a date between 1856–8.66 However, the material and physiognomic evidence suggest a later date of 1859–60 for Whistler Smoking, which also aligns with Théodore Duret’s dating.67

The 1890s panels reconsidered

The modest scale of Head of a Peasant Woman has previously invited comparison with Whistler’s panel portraits of the 1890s. The majority of Whistler’s 1890s panels are smaller in scale, apart from three, which are a comparable size. Among the smaller panels, half-length portraits are limited to The Rose Scarf 1892–6 (YMSM 390; fig.47), Study of a Girl’s Head and Shoulders 1896–7 (YMSM 486; fig.48) and Study of a Girl’s Head 1896–7 (YMSM 487; Newark Museum of Art). The other small panels depict urban street scenes, coastal views, full-length society or nude portraits which form a mature body of work. Technical analysis confirms that Whistler’s late panels were structured through a restrained palette and controlled tonal modulation, reinforcing their conception as harmonies and aligning with his wider aesthetic philosophy.68 The supports are consistently of hardwood and have a minimum depth of 5 millimetres, in contrast to the thinner, hand-sawn, softwood support of Head of a Peasant Woman.69 The underdrawing is typically applied in chalk or with a ‘crayon-like material’; graphite alone is used infrequently, differing from the underdrawing found on Head of a Peasant Woman.70

Whistler’s 1890s grounds were consistently grey and they utilise a more economical palette. In those where analysis has been conducted, the pigments used in the ground layer are limited to combinations of lead white, bone black and brown earth.71 Whether commercial or artist-applied, these grounds consist of a single layer, brushed broadly and aligned to the wood grain, with sufficient body to remain visible beneath the paint layers – a legibility that underscores the thinness of the superimposed paint across the entire surface.72 Whistler additionally wiped back the upper layers of paint to reveal the tones beneath, with the ground, thinness of paint and this subtraction converging to produce an optical harmony. Critics observed that the ‘paint is laid with so little body that it scarcely seems to exist’ and that they were ‘scarcely more than veils of colour’.73 The grey ground, rather than being concealed, participates optically, for example, serving as a mid-tone within flesh or clothing, as a highlight within drapery and as a unifying tonal field across the composition. Whistler’s 1890s paintings have a silvery grey tonality providing a unifying tone, an effect that can be observed on both The Rose Scarf and Study of a Girl’s Head and Shoulders.

The 1890s panels are typically executed in lean, highly diluted washes and are free from the drying cracks typical of the 1850s portraits. Whistler’s paint has been repeatedly described as being applied ‘rapidly’ in ‘very thin washes’ – sometimes ‘extremely thin’ or ‘excessively thinned’ – and frequently in conjunction with references to ‘rubbing away’ and the use of Whistler’s self-styled ‘sauce’, which he could have used to maintain the paint’s translucency and gloss while enabling it to be applied thinly.74 He applied these films of paint in gesturally confident strokes as well as with subtractive techniques. Lead soap aggregates that develop in the ground are often found on later panel works, producing minute protrusions of light-coloured paint that are scarcely visible without a microscope but which nonetheless contribute to their subtle texture (fig.49a).75 Such aggregates were not observed emerging from the smooth imprimatura of Head of a Peasant Woman (fig.49b), and were barely visible in cross-section.

The 1890s panels achieve unity through freely applied, thin veils of diluted paint and visible ground participation. Head of a Peasant Woman, by contrast, retains a greater sense of material and graphic differentiation through layered opacity over multiple preparation layers, within a drawn form. When support, preparation layers, underdrawing, paint viscosity, surface texture, drying behaviours, compositions and naming conventions are considered together, Head of a Peasant Woman is materially incompatible with the 1890s works, placing it within the mid-1850s rather than in Whistler’s later panel practice.76

Conclusions

When considered within the chronology of Whistler’s early oils, Head of a Peasant Woman’s restrained palette, layered ground structure and additive modelling align it materially with the artist’s formative period of 1856–7, when drawing continued to stabilise form, the brush was used as if it were a drawing tool, and oil remained a medium to be mastered. The painting represents the convergence of the tonal discipline Whistler learned in America, his academic training in St Petersburg and at West Point, and his early sustained engagement with oil paint in Paris. Its provenance and authorship are supported by technical comparisons that reveal similarities in technique and pigment combinations between this portrait, La Mère Gérard and the other comparative works.77 The technical developments and experimentation evident in Whistler’s 1857–9 portraits map his gradual evolution, and technical comparison with La Mère Gérard clarifies the shift in his practice that followed. The presence of shared pigments and common techniques confirm continuity of hand, yet the later work, with its impasted passages, visible reworked passages and tonal mass superseding contour, attests to Whistler’s greater confidence and experience. Considered alongside the physiognomy of his self-portraits, this shift also clarifies the dating of Whistler Smoking. Its developed handling and the wrinkling within the paint film align it more closely with the paint surfaces that emerge post 1860, supporting a date of 1859–60, when execution had assumed a new authority within Whistler’s portraiture.

Scholars agree that a comparable evolution unfolds across the watercolours. Lee Glazer discusses Whistler’s inventive exploration of the medium of watercolour from c.1880 and Emily Jacobson and Blythe McCarthy argue that it was an approach he would take throughout his life.78 Early works such as Dr Henry Hudson display Whistler’s tentative control on white paper, with the handling remaining cautious; subsequent works, including The Kitchen 1858 (M.0235; fig.50), show his increasing assurance in tonal organisation and surface coherence; and ultimately Two Breton Women Knitting 1893 (M.1364; fig.51) include attenuated washes that align with the optical harmony of the 1890s panels. Across media, the same sequence emerges: exploration, consolidation and finally independence and the acquisition of unconscious skill in execution.

Together, the material evidence found in his 1850s portraits expands our understanding of Whistler’s early techniques and their gradual evolution into an updated chronology (fig.52). Head of a Peasant Woman anticipates neither the translucent harmonies of the 1890s panels nor yet the technical confidence of La Mère Gérard. It precedes it, in the period of Whistler’s life when the transition from line to paint is still perceptible.