Provenance:
Goldfield Galleries, Los Angeles, California (label verso)

Exhibited:
New York, M. Knoelder & Co., William Merritt Chase, A Benefit Exhibition for the Parrish Art Museum, May 7 - June 5, 1976 (possibly no. 84, as Portrait Study (oil sketch) and dated c. 1908)

Literature:
Ronald G. Pisano, William Merritt Chase: Portraits in Oil, New Haven, Connecticut, 2010, vol. 2, pp. 180-181, no. OP.352, illus.

Lot note:
According to Ronald G. Pisano's catalogue raisonné on the artist, records show the verso of the present painting bore an inscription that read, "Painted before class, Miss Willard-student." (the painting is now lined and the inscription no longer visible) The artwork is dated c. 1902, the final year Chase taught at his Shinnecock summer art school. It is characteristic of Chase's many demonstration pieces. The original iteration of the portrait had the sitter posed wearing a hat, which at some unknown point was painted over, with hair added in its stead.