Lithograph printed in black on grayish white Chine appliqué on white plate paper, circa 1889. 196x112 mm; 7 3/4x4 1/2 inches, full margins. Edition of approximately only 28. Signed with the butterfly in pencil, lower left. A very good impression of this extremely scarce lithograph.
We have not found another pencil signed, lifetime impression at auction in the past 30 years (and only 6 posthumous impressions, from the posthumous edition of 40, have appeared at auction in the past 30 years).
According to Spink, "Model Draping depicts a young girl lifting diaphaous drapery over her head, a motif that Whistler explored in a variety of media . . . The model appears to be the same adolescent girl who posed for Harmony in Blue and Violet, a pastel acquired directly from Whistler by Charles Lang Freer in 1890, now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C." There is also a drawing of this subject in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. Way 31; Levy 49; Spink 31.
