Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl
Symphony in White, No. 1, also known as The White Girl, is a painting by James McNeill Whistler. The work shows a woman in full figure standing on a wolf skin in front of a beige curtain with a lily in her hand. The colour scheme of the painting is almost entirely white. The model is Joanna Hiffernan, the artist's mistress. Though the painting was originally called The White Girl, Whistler later started calling it Symphony in White, No. 1. By referring to his work in such abstract terms, he intended to emphasize his "art for art's sake" philosophy.
Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl
Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe caused a stir at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, but the attention given to Whistler's White Girl was even greater.
Image: Whistler James Symphony in White no 2 (The Little White Girl) 1864
Image: Whistler Symphony in white 3
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake".
Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter (self portrait, c. 1872), Detroit Institute of Arts
Portrait of Whistler with Hat (1858), a self-portrait at the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862), The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Paris, c.1863, albumen print by Etienne Carjat, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, D.C.
