Staff Favorite: Ashleigh Hill on James Abbott McNeill Whistler's "Miss Florence Leyland"
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (United States, 1834–1903), Miss Florence Leyland, circa 1873, oil on canvas, 75 1/2 x 36 1/8 inches. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Strouse, 1968.1
When I started at the PMA three years ago, this James Abbott McNeill Whistler work was hanging in the McLellan House, and with the lighting you could just barely make out her shape. Even now that it’s hanging on the second floor of the Charles Shipman Payson Building, it still reminds me of a ghostly image emerging from a dark room. There’s an eeriness to the image, but I also find it very beautiful. In addition to my aesthetic interest in the work, I had the opportunity to hear Andrew Eschelbacher, our former Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Associate Curator of European Art, explain Whistler’s intentionality in the gray and black tones, and describe the fallout between Whistler and Florence Leyland’s father—how Whistler scraped her face off the canvas at one point and replaced it with that of his mistress, and how the painting was used in a libel suit that led to Whistler going bankrupt. With all of its surrounding drama, I can understand how fortunate the PMA is to have this work in the collection.