Composition

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, Private Collection

La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, Freer Gallery of Art

On the evidence of the screen, it has been compared to La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine [YMSM 050], but there is no real connection.

There are signs of revisions and pentimenti, quite apart from the brutal scraping down of the whole composition. For instance, there is more than one change to the shape of the skirt at lower right.

Technique

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, Private Collection

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, detail, Private Collection

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, detail, Private Collection

It was thinly painted and scraped down, and possibly repainted by an unknown hand. It would be an unusual size for Whistler (one that was more usual in his much later work, in the 1890s). The brushwork that is visible is not like Whistler's work.

Conservation History

Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929) told Joseph Pennell in 1910 that the screen in the picture had been partly repainted. 1

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, photograph, 1980

A photograph of 1980 shows no radical changes.

Frame

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, frame

Grau-style frame, in a style dating from after 1892, and probably a much later addition.