Head of an Old Man Smoking

Whistler was a young art student in Paris, probably in the spring of 1858, when he painted this old street trader. Charles Drouet, a sculptor friend who later owned the canvas, said the man sold chamber pots and was paid 40 sous for sitting, two francs. The painter's early biographers, Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell, preferred a gentler story of an old crockery pedlar found by chance in the market of Les Halles. Paint lies thick on the face, the hat and the shirt, and the white shirt front was partly worked with a palette knife, while the coat and background stay thin. A twist of red on the hat is the one bright colour. Drouet left the picture to the French state, and it was first shown in public in 1905, two years after the artist died.