Composition

Venus, Freer Gallery of Art

A small oil sketch that relates to the same design, the pose differing in minor details, is known as Tanagra [YMSM 092]

Venus, photograph altered by Whistler, GUL Whistler PH4/10

An old photograph of the cartoon, drawn on with sharp pencil or incised lines to the left of her back, making her lean more to the left, is in the University of Glasgow. However, the suggested alteration was not acted upon.

The head was originally tilted more to the right. The face is very soft and was drawn in delicately, not rubbed, to achieve soft shading. This must have been done to make an effect as a drawing (the shading could not be reproduced in the pouncing and was so much wasted effort). The shading, carefully drawn, uses soft diagonal curving lines suggesting the curves of body and face.

Technique

Venus, Freer Gallery of Art

The cartoon was pounced for transfer to a canvas of the same size but no painting has survived and it may be that none was completed. Not all lines have been pricked: the bottom horizontal line was never pricked, and this could suggest it was drawn in later: the third line up was very sparsely pounced and would have been difficult to follow in the transferring process. Similarly the darkest, perhaps the definitive, line on her left leg was not pricked, although there are lines on either side of the upper leg and inside the lower leg that were. The curves of her stomach and crotch were pounced with great care, as were the curves, carefully drawn in perspective, of the vase. A diagonal line from lower right to upper right just to left of the vase was pricked, but not the swirl of drapery to left of it.

The fan she holds was pricked, as was another of the same size below and to the right. One fan, that goes off the edge at right, had a second top line drawn and pricked. The fans on the left were so heavily pounced that the paper has cracked along the lines.

Conservation History

Small fibres and fragments of stalk are visible in the paper, but the surface is almost shiny, with a horizontal grain. It is strong paper and despite numerous alterations and rubbing out, the fibres remain surprisingly undisturbed.

The cartoon was removed from an old backing in 1976, because it had cracked at the edges- and there has been paper loss all along the edge. It was washed and as a result the paper became lighter (it now has an orangey tone) but some of the white chalk was lost in the process. The original balance of black and white chalk can be seen in the original photograph of Venus [M.0357].