Gay Paget in the Garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire

Gay Paget in the Garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire is one of two works that record James McNeill Whistler’s visit to the northern England estate of Lord Wharncliffe in the early 1880s. Gay Paget (Alberta Victoria Sarah Caroline Paget), later Duchess of Plymouth, was Wharncliffe’s daughter. Whistler shows her in profile, with the landscape beyond tipped up in perspective so as to enframe her. Both figure and setting are sketchily painted in thin washes of muted watercolor, suggesting the artist’s rapid, on-site execution. This work is typical of many of Whistler’s watercolors, which he left deliberately unfinished for evocative effect. Their evidence of rapid creative process was central to Whistler’s idea that an artist’s long experience and aesthetic genius were expressed in the merest stroke of the brush and on the most intimate scale.

Visages de l'Amérique: de George Washington à Marilyn Monroe (Faces of America: From George Washington to Marilyn Monroe), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2004 (on exhibit partial run: April 1–May 3, 2004 and July 5–October 31, 2004). [exh. cat.]

Art in Prints 7. New York: Kennedy Galleries, May 1970. Ill. p. 25 (as Gay Padgett later Duchess of Plymouth).

MacDonald, Margaret F. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels, and Watercolours; A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Connecticut and London, England: Yale University Press, 1995. Text no. 854, pp. 321–22; ill. no. 854, p. 322 (black & white).