Arrangement in Flesh Color and Brown: Portrait of Arthur Jerome Eddy (1894): Artwork and History

Arrangement in Flesh Color and Brown: Portrait of Arthur Jerome Eddy (1894) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

James McNeill Whistler created thinly painted compositions with flat, nearly abstract passages, purposefully subtle in character. He called works such as this one an “arrangement,” emphasizing formal elements rather than subject matter. The painting still serves as a portrait—it was commissioned by Chicago attorney Arthur Jerome Eddy, a collector and advocate of modern art. After seeing Whistler’s work at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in the city, Eddy traveled to the artist’s studio in Paris expressly to sit for this portrait. The two became lasting friends, and Eddy published a book on Whistler after the artist’s death in 1903.

Object facts

• Title: Arrangement in Flesh Color and Brown: Portrait of Arthur Jerome Eddy
• Date: 1894
• Artist attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Place of origin: Paris
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 210.7 × 93.3 cm (82 15/16 × 36 3/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Arts of the Americas
• Reference number: 1931.501

Collection credit

Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.