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Henry Morley:
Portrait of a lady, seated in the artist’s future wife, 1893
Framed (ref: 504)
Signed and dated
Oil on canvas, 12 x 14 in. (30.5 x 35.5 cm.)

Tags: Henry Morley oil

Provenance: private collection since circa 1990
Literature: Henry Morley: A Stirling Artist, exh. cat.,
Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, 2004, pp. 2–3

This portrait is based on James McNeill Whistler’s iconic Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother 1872 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Morley trained at the Académie Julian and would thus have been aware of Whistler’s work. It was also in Paris that Morley met his future wife, Isobel Hutchison, possibly the subject of this portrait.
The setting of the painting is likely to be Craigmill House, near Stirling, where both Henry and Isobel learned to paint under Joseph Denovan Adam at the atelier he ran there. Thereafter they both specialised as landscape painters, typically producing plein-air oils in the vicinity of Stirling, of the type seen in the background of this work.

We are grateful to Michael McGinnes of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum for assistance.