Dr. Isaac Burnet Davenport (1854-1922)

Label

Late in his career, James McNeill Whistler devoted himself primarily to portraiture, producing emotive likenesses in which spectral, thinly painted faces emerge from dark backgrounds. Dr. Isaac Burnet Davenport was an American dentist living in Paris who established one of the largest dental practices in Europe and was brother to Whistler’s own Parisian dentist. This ethereal image makes no allusion to the sitter’s occupation or prominent social standing. Instead, it suggests a deeply introspective individual concerned more with the life of the mind than with material pursuits. He sat innumerable times for this portrait, which Whistler worked on sporadically for a period of about twelve years, repeatedly rubbing it down. As he informed his students late in life: "A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared." The canvas was finally varnished and delivered to Davenport after the artist’s death.

From the 2019 exhibition American Art, Colonial to Modern, curated by Barbara J. MacAdam, Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art

Exhibition History

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Art, Colonial to Modern, Israel Sack Gallery and Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 20, 2020-September 12, 2021.

American Viewpoints: Painting and Sculpture from the Hood Museum of Art, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California, May 5-August 31, 2003.

Exposition des oeuvres de James McNeill Whistler, May 1905, no. 28

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-April 21, 2003.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 19, 2003-August 21, 2006.

James McNeill Whistler: Works from the Dartmouth Collection, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 9-March 13, 1988.

Publication History

Antiques & The Arts Weekly, "Whistler Portrait donated to Hood Museum of Art", Hanover, December 18, 1987, p. 85.

Valley News Echoes, "Newly Acquired Whistler Portrait on View in Sack Gallery at Hood", Hanover, May 5, 1987, p. 1.

Sotheby's, Sale 5463, American Paintings, May 5, 1986, lot no. 144.

Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret MacDonald, Robin Spencer, Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980, v. I, p. 189, no. 426, v. II, no. 263, ill.

John J. Cowan, From 1846 to 1932, Edinburgh, 1933, p. 85

Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennell, The Life of Jamess McNeill Whistler, 5th edition, reivsed, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1911, p. 321.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 70, no. 48.

Provenance

Dr. Isaac Burnet Davenport (1845-1922), Paris, France; Mrs. Davenport, Larchmont, New York; Sotheby's New York, May 29, 1986, sale no. 5463; sold to Adolph Weil Jr. (1915-1995), 1986; given to present collection, 1986.

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