Miss Florence Leyland

Whistler started this portrait around 1873 for Frederick Leyland, the Liverpool shipowner who was then his main patron and who put him up at Speke Hall, the family house outside the city. Florence, one of the daughters, sat for him there over the following two winters. Then came the dining room. In 1876 and 1877 Whistler covered Leyland's London dining room in blue and gold peacocks while the owner was away, asked 2,000 guineas for the job, and was paid 1,000 pounds, in pounds rather than guineas, the way a tradesman was settled with. The friendship ended and the portrait stayed in the studio for years, unfinished. When Whistler finally worked it up, he did so on a canvas that had carried a full-length of Maud Franklin, his model and companion, and the picture reached the Leylands around 1884. Florence had been 13 or 14 at the first sittings and was in her mid-twenties when it arrived.