Study for "Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth" (recto); Study for "Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland" (verso)

Whistler created this sketch in preparation for a large-format painting. Made around the same time as the portrait of his mother, this drawing shows its subject, Mrs. Louis Huth, standing in front of a patterned textile and oriented to the viewer nearly in full profile. We know from a letter that Anna Whistler wrote late in 1871 that she tried to model for her son in a standing position but found it too physically demanding. No similar preparatory study for the painting survives; since Whistler lived with his mother, he had little need of a memory aid sketch like this one. He could paint his model directly from life any day of the week, except Sundays, when she demurred for religious observance.