Identity:

Marion Draughan was a patron of JW in the late 1890s.

Life:

According to the Pennells: 'Miss Marian Draughn, a very beautiful American girl', began to sit to JW for her portrait, Portrait of Miss Marian Draughn (YMSM 533), before he had finished his own self-portrait, possibly Brown and Gold (YMSM 440) or Gold and Brown (YMSM 462). She was sent to JW, according to the Pennells, by the illustrators Charles Dana Gibson and Phil May. Draughan was frequently to be found in JW's studio in 1901 and helped find rooms for Carmen Rossi on his behalf. JW called her his 'White Coon', his 'Coon girl' and his 'Florida Gurl'. He wrote to her around 1901: 'See now! the gods have sent you! - a Florida flower from over the seas - to me! - Their painter' (#11205). She was possibly one of the 'Gibson Girls'. Gibson's Americans, published in London in 1900, was a collection of his drawings of beautiful women.

Bibliography:

Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, p. 204; Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 5th ed., revised, London and Philadelphia, 1911, p. 355; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980.