Sir Henry Studdy Theobald was an English barrister and a member of the Burlington Fine Arts Society. Theobald had been an avid collector since childhood and developed an affinity for Old Master prints, Whistler etchings, and Turner watercolors. In his memoirs, Theobald recalled that one summer in the mid-1880s, Walter Dowdeswell visited his law chambers hoping to interest him in a cache of paintings and works on paper by Whistler. After a second visit and much negotiating, Theobald bought what he called an "olla podrida" of pictures in oil, chalk, pencil, and pastel for not much more than the sticker price of a single work. In the years that followed, Whistler often visited the collector's house to admire his own work, which hung in the dining room and along the stairway, and to request many of them be loaned for special exhibitions. In one such request, Whistler wrote to Theobald on April 25, 1888, "when a painting is bought by a private gentleman, it is, so to speak, withdrawn from circulation, and for public fame is missing from the story of the painter's reputation." In 1902 Theobald's failing vision necessitated the disposal of his art collection. Freer paid several visits to Theobald's house in Hyde Park before entering into negotiations for the paintings that were first exhibited at the 1884 Dowdeswell show and then sold to Theobald at a steep discount the following summer. Freer, who had seen many of the watercolors at the 1889 Wunderlich exhibition, described the ensemble as "the most varied and beautiful and the finest single group known" (Freer to Frank Hecker, May 30, 1902). Freer purchased sixteen of the Whistler watercolors owned by Theobald on June 20, 1902.