Large format signed albumen photograph of the celebrated painting, now in the collection of the Worcester Art Museum. One of Whistler's best and most characteristic full length life size figures, this work from 1877 is an idealized of Miss Maud Franklin who was painted repeatedly by Whistler in various poses. The work is thus described in the illustrated catalogue of the Whistler Memorial Exhibition held in London in 1905: "Full-length standing figure of a lady in profile to left, three-quarters face, her left hand on her hip. She wears a brown hat, brown boa round her neck, black jacket trimmed with brown fur, and brown skirt. The floor is brown, and the background black. A black butterfly in brown panel to left."

First edition of this image, from the portfolio Nocturnes-Marines-Chevalet Pieces (1892) as photographed by William Gray, Glasgow and issued by Goupil Gallery, London, being one (of 24) mounted photographs of the artist's paintings, each signed by the artist "Whistler" and with his butterfly device on the leaf below the photograph. Reportedly, only a small number of these signed collections were prepared and successfully sold, and of those, most were split up. Image measures 10 x 4.75 inches with the mat window measuring 14 x 7.75. The frame measures 24.75 x 18.5 x 1 inches. 

"In The Fur Jacket...Whistler has placed darks against and beside each other with an artist's joy in bringing out their subtly graded values. The delicately discriminated masses define the figure and set it in the dusky void of air. But a new wizardry, like that of Velasquez, has come into his brush: each sure, smooth, liquid sweep seems to gather to itself atmosphere, mysterious chiaroscuro, changing textures, all in one...Indeed, there is something like necromantic evocation in this marvellous presentment. Much is given, it is true, to our physical vision, but more is hinted, suggested, inevitably supplied by the imagination. When first we look we see vaguely a woman's figure painted at full length, very simply. For a moment that is all there is within the frame, except a gathered dimness. Gradually the tones waver and clear into translucent shadow and the superb figure sweeps up clearly defined, filling out the forms slowly, as things take shape in the poetic moments of dusk. The very contours, clear to the fancy, are fugitive to the eye. They are both suggested through, and absorbed by, the aerial twilight in which the figure stands. As the eye travels upwards and catches the stronger accents of the related hues, these change and interplay till their earlier soberness is transformed...All grossness of surfaces and lines has been refined away till the portrait, in the indescribable ease and distinction of its simple pose, seems less that of a material woman than of her immaterial ideal self-the very spirit, as it were, of all that is representative and best in her. One glorious passage where the fur of the tippet cuts across neck and chin and defines the delicately modeled ear is in lovely line and color one of the wonders of modern art...Of all Whistler's faces, this is surely the most beautiful. Its almost romantic loveliness in which thought, will and feeling merge, lures us upon enchanted ground. An almost ethereal pallor is hinted beneath its quiet radiance; it seems like some rare exotic flower found strangely in the cold twilight of our northern spring, a flower delicate yet resistant in spite of apparent fragility. The haunting wistfulness of the mouth and of the wonderful eyes, their saddened expression both of rebellion and of self-discipline, the singular grace of the momentarily arrested attitude, and the whole rich emotional and intellectual suggestion of that sensitive, high-bred being cast their spell upon us and we forget the magic means of revelation for the personage revealed."