Catalogue Entry

No. 121: "A fair-haired young lady, wearing a gray dress trimmed with puffs of blue, leans on the corner of a Franklin stove in an attitude of meditation. On the chimney breast above the fireplace opening are shelves with porcelain vases and other objects, and in the background, beyond the figure, is suggested a mahogany lowboy with three jars, one of which contains flowers."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 26 inches; width, 17 ½ inches."
[Annotation: “Out”]

Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)

[The artist's estate sale, American Art Association, New York, February 26–27, 1907, no. 121 (as The Lady in Gray)]

By descent in the family of the artist, until 1977

[Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1977]

Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1986 (by purchase)

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, American Art from the Gallery's Collection, October 4–25, 1980, no. 52, p. 65, as Study for Portrait of Harriet Hubbard Ayer.

Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the Late Eastman Johnson, N.A. New York: American Art Association, February 1907. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 121, as The Lady in Gray.

American Genre Painting in the Victorian Era: Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, and their Contemporaries. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1978. Exhibition catalogue (1978 Hirschl & Adler), p. 49, no. 53, illus., as Study for Portrait of Harriet Hubbard Ayer.

American Art from the Gallery's Collection. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1980, p. 65, no. 52, illus., as Study for Portrait of Harriet Hubbard Ayer.