# Maud Franklin

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**Maud Franklin** (9 January 1857 – 18 November 1939) was an [English](/source/English_people) [artist](/source/Artist) and the mistress and model for artist [James McNeill Whistler](/source/James_McNeill_Whistler).[1][2]

## Life

Franklin was born in [Bicester](/source/Bicester), [Oxfordshire](/source/Oxfordshire), England, one of six children of Charles Franklin, an upholsterer and cabinetmaker, and Mary Clifton, after whom she was christened 'Mary'.[3] She may have posed for Whistler as early as 1872, as a stand-in for his portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland, when she was fifteen.[2]

By the late 1870s, she was serving as a model to Whistler for etchings and painted portraits, most notably the *Arrangement in White and Black*. She also was the initial model for what would be the *Portrait of Miss Florence Leyland*, as well as *Harmony in Grey and Peach Colour*, numerous other oils, drawings, watercolours, etchings and lithographs.[3]

Franklin had two daughters by Whistler: Ione (born circa 1877) and Maud McNeill Whistler Franklin (born 1879).[2] She sometimes referred to herself as 'Mrs. Whistler',[4] and in the census of 1881 gave her name as 'Mary M. Whistler'.[3]

She was not always well treated by Whistler; at the time of his libel trial with [John Ruskin](/source/John_Ruskin) in January 1879 he left Franklin, then pregnant, in a London hotel under the pretence that he was in Paris.[3] Following Whistler's bankruptcy later that year, she accompanied him to Venice, but was not accepted into society.[3] In the 1880s her health suffered, and she was the subject of watercolours by Whistler depicting her in bed.

During the 1880s, she exhibited her own artwork at the [Grosvenor Gallery](/source/Grosvenor_Gallery) under the [pseudonym](/source/Pseudonym) Clifton Lin, and at the Society of British Artists.[2]

After Whistler married [Beatrice Godwin](/source/Beatrice_Whistler) in 1888, Franklin moved to Paris. She married a New York man named John A. Little; in 1904 he died, and around 1911 Franklin married another [American](/source/United_States), Richard H. S. Abbott, and lived near [Cannes](/source/Cannes) until her death in 1939 aged 82.[2][3]

## Notes

1. Spencer, 24

1. Spencer, 88

1. [University of Glasgow](http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/biog/display/?bid=Fran_M)

1. Weintraub, Stanley (1983). *Whistler*. New York: E.P. Dutton. p. 166 & 322. ISBN 0-679-40099-0.

## References

- Spencer, Robin, *Whistler*. Studio Editions Ltd., London, 1993.
- [*The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler*, University of Glasgow](http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/biog/display/?bid=Fran_M)

## External links

- [Maud Franklin](https://whistlerpaintings.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/biog/?nid=FranM) at the Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

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