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JAMES BBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER(1834-1903) COUNT ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU-FEZENSAC Canvas, 35 inches by 81 inches FULL length, life size, standing figure turned to the right with his face almost full front. H wears a black suit; a dark fray overcoat, lined with sil-very-gray, is thrown over his left arm; in his left hand holds a slender brown cane. The background is dark, almost black; the floor a golden brown. Butterfly monogram, in brown silhouette against darker background, is placed to the left, half-way up. Arrangement in black and gold. Mentioned in Bryan, V. 362. Exhibited: Boston Memorial Exhibition, No. 39. Purchased from Comte de Montesquiou early in 1903. The portrait of Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac was painted in 1890 and 1891; there was a second one, which was never finished. Edmond de Goncourt, in his journal for July 7. 1891, wrote: "Montesquiou tells me that Whistler is now doing two portraits of him; one is in evening dress with a fur coat under his arm, the other in a gray cloak, with high collar at his neck just suggested, a necktie of a mauve not to be put into words, though his eyes express the ideal color of it." Whistler undertook to make a lithograph of the Comte Robert, but failed, saving: :It was impossible to produce the same masterpiece twice over- as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg twice." Count Robert, poet and "literary musketeer, " died at Mentone. in 1921, in his sixty-sixth year. 173