Resting in Bed F1907.172a-c: Curatorial Analysis | Whistler in Watercolor

Maker nationality and date: 1834-1903

Date(s): 1883-1884

Medium: Watercolor on paper

Dimension(s): H x W: 17 x 24 cm (6 11/16 x 9 7/16 in)

Credit Line: Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Object Number: F1907.172a-c

Alternate title: Maud in bed in 448 Fulham Road

Production location: England, London

Theme: Figure; Interior

Signature(s): Unsigned.

Provenance: To 1907
Obach & Co., London, to 1907 [1]

From 1907 to 1919
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased from Obach & Co. in 1907 [2]

From 1920
Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [3]

Notes:

[1] See Original Whistler List, Paintings, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. See also, Accession File, Collections Management office.

[2] See note 1.

[3] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.

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 the large 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. Katherine Roeder, 2018:
Dating is contemporaneous with JMW's Milly Finch portraits. As Margaret MacDonald points out, JMW painted Milly Finch during the same period that Maud Franklin was convalescing in bed.

Selected Published References: 1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 198
Resting in Bed is seductively painted, and Whistler created a sexually charged image of artist and mistress by using much the same vocabulary that informs Pink Note: The Novelette [F1902.158]. At the far end of the room, a male presence is declared by a black silk top hat. The hat is entangled in the black and pink folds of an evening cape, and we may safely presume a romantic attachment between the woman in bed and the invisible male symbolized by the hat. Again, fans and a picture on the mantle are related by color and suggest artistic occupants, implying that Whistler's watercolor is based upon his relationship with his mistress Maud Franklin. Several related images testify to Whistler's fondness for the general composition [Girl Reading in Bed, ink. Art Institute of Chicago]. However, variations in the details alter the meaning of each work. By changing the setting to an outdoor hammock, Whistler captured an atmosphere of pleasant idleness [Maud Reading in a Hammock, watercolor. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard]. Another watercolor is given a gently domestic turn with the substitution of a coffee pot, napkin, and plate for the domino and silk hat [The Convalescent, fig. 10 from The Studio Whistler Portfolio (London, 1905), Freer Archive]. In 1896 Whistler used a reversed and elaborated variant of the composition to depict his dying wife Beatrix, lying by her balcony at the Savoy Hotel in London [By the Balcony, lithograph, F1905.212].

Catalogue Raisonne number: M901
MacDonald Catalogue number

Previous owner(s): Obach & Co. (C.L. Freer source) (1884-1911)
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)

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Resting in Bed

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