Composition

The composition resembles those of several lithographs of 1890, particularly Mother and Child, No. 3 c052.

David P. Curry (1984) compared it with Tintoretto's The Birth of the Milky Way. Whistler is known to have admired Tintoretto greatly, knew this specific painting, and indeed owned photographs of it. 1

Technique

There are faint signs of another drawing, a figure, underneath, sideways on, with her head above the 'Pearl's' right foot. The vertical lines above the figure are in fact the floor, dado and matting of this earlier drawing. There was a pot, perhaps with flowers, on the left, and a butterfly on the right. The butterfly is similar to the later drawing, so presumably the under-drawing was rubbed out and the paper re-used almost immediately.

The Freer Gallery of Art website confirms: 'An infrared photo reveals an earlier black chalk drawing of a standing figure with a pot of flowers' but adds, mistakenly, 'probably related to the Six Projects, a series of oil sketches from ca. 1868.' 2

Frame

It was framed by Frederick Henry Grau (1859-1892).