Study from the Nude, Woman Asleep

The Pettigrew sisters—Hetty, Lily, and Rose—began modeling in their teens, posing first for John Everett Millais and then for Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer, Edward Linley Sambourne, and Hamo Thornycroft. Whistler employed all three sisters for his transfer lithographs in the early 1890s, sometimes along with a child, who has been identified as a Pettigrew niece. Hetty was Roussel’s principal model, seen in his most famous painting, The Reading Girl (1886/87; Tate Gallery).