• Violet and Amber–Tea
  • Violet and Amber–Tea

Violet and Amber–Tea

A woman seated at a breakfast table in front of a window; signed with the butterfly at right edge.
Maker nationality and date
1834-1903
Date(s)
1882-1884
Medium
Watercolor on paper
Dimension(s)
H x W: 25.2 x 17.6 cm (9 15/16 x 6 15/16 in)
Credit Line
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
Object Number
F1902.162a-c
Alternate title
Violet and Amber–Tea
Petit Déjeuner: Note in Opal
Note in Opal: Breakfast
Production location
England, London, possibly Chelsea
Theme
Figure; Studio
Signature(s)
Brown butterfly below center at right edge
Provenance
Exhibition History
Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell, "Notes"—"Harmonies"—"Nocturnes", May 1884
Copley Society of Art, Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, February 23 to March 22, 1904
Freer Gallery of Art, American Paintings, Pastels, and Water Colors, and Drawings. J.A.McN. Whistler, May 2, 1923 to January 7, 1924
Selected Curatorial Remarks

1. Glazer, Jacobson, McCarthy, Roeder, wall label, 2019:
Whistler's domestic interiors often convey a sense of intimacy or capture a private moment. An early work in this vein is Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room; (1860–61), an oil painting of his half-sister (playing a hidden piano), his niece, and a family friend. Twenty years later he returned to the theme in his watercolors.

He frequently depicted his model and longtime companion Maud Franklin, recognizable by her auburn hair, in quiet moments at home. Several compositions contain suggestions of an unseen person – perhaps the artist himself – by including a hat on the bed or an empty chair.

2. Lee Glazer, 2018:
Title change: When it was first exhibited Dowdeswell in 1884, the piece was titled Violet and Amber: Tea. According to McDonald, the title Note in Opal: Breakfast was given in error because Freer thought this was the picture exhibited at Dowdeswell's in London in 1884 as Petit Déjeuner–note in opal. But that work can be identified by descriptions as Convalescent or Petit Dejeuner; note in opal, (No. 903 in McDonald, private collection, Great Britain). By the time this piece was exhibited at Whistler's 1904 memorial exhibit at the Copley Society (105), the title had been changed, erroneously or not, to Petit Déjeuner–Note in Opal. According to ledgers and receipts, this is the title of the piece as it was sold to Freer by Theobald.

3. Susan Hobbs, 1978:
It is likely that Maud Franklin was the model for this watercolor just as she posed for Ranelagh Gardens.

Selected Published References

1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 196
Maude Franklin posed for a number of elegant little interior views during the early 1880s. Note in Opal captures an inviting bourgeois scene: a breakfast table at which the artist's mistress sits reading. The empty chair at the left can again be presumed to be Whistler's, and his artistic presence is particularly strong on that side of the paper, where he has dampened the paper to exploit the fluid evanescence of his medium. Thus, as the room is awash in light, the paper has literally been flooded with opalescent color. The dissolution of forms in light was a major impressionist theme, and these works correspond in period and feeling to the brightly lit interiors of Berthe Morisot.

2. Standard, May 20, 1884
"'Violet and Amber – Tea' (35), might also be styled 'an essay in smudge'."

Catalogue Raisonne number
M897
MacDonald Catalogue number
Previous owner(s)
Henry Studdy Theobald (C.L. Freer source) (1847-1934)
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)
CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)
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