Nude Reclining

Date: 1893-1900
Medium: Colored pastel and black chalk on brown wove paper laid down on card 
Dimensions: 179 x 276 mm.  7 x 10 7/8 in.
References: MacDonald 1385
Signature: Artist’s butterfly monogram in chalk upper right
Provenance: The artist; to Miss R. Birnie Philip (1873-1958, London and Paris), bequeathed by the artist to his sister-in-law; to P. & D. Colnaghi & Company, Ltd., London (1 June 1943); to Mr. Villiers David, London; to Sotheby’s, London (15 June 1960, lot 55, as “Reclining Female Nude”); to P. & D. Colnaghi & Company, Ltd., London; to Laing Galleries, Toronto (6 June 1961); to P. Brissenden, Vancouver; 1970 to Jerrold Morris Gallery, Toronto; by January 1982 to Albert Starkman, Toronto, Canada; to Christie’s New York (2 December 1988, lot 131, as “Nude Reclining”); to David Tunick, Inc., New York; March 1989 to Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago
Exhibitions: A Selection of Drawings from the Morris Gallery, Morris Gallery, Toronto, 1976; American Treasures: Chase, Whistler and the Prendergasts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, April 26, 1996–January 5, 1997; Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, June 6–August 30, 1998; Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, May 9–July 9, 2000; Modern Harmonies: Whistler Reflects on his Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, May 31–August 31, 2003; Expanded Galleries of American Art with Loans from the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, April 15–July 17, 2005; Whistler and Roussel: Linked Visions, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, June 20–September 27, 2015, cat. no. 7.8
Literature: ARTNews, vol. 69, October 1970, p. 67; Robert Getscher, James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Pastels, G. Braziller, New York, 1991, text p. 152–3, ill. no. 57; Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels, and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995, text no. 1385, p. 500, ill. no. 1385, p. 500; Martha Tedeschi and Britt Salvesen, “Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography,” Museum Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 1998, p. 56, cat. 109, p. 75, fig. 64, p. 58; Meg Hausberg and Victoria Sancho Lobis, Whistler and Roussel: Linked Visions, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2015, cat. no. 7.8