Composition

There are several drawings that may be related to designs for panels at South Kensington Museum, including: r.: A Japanese Woman; v.: Girl with parasol [M.0458], A Chinese lady with a parasol [M.0459], and Japanese lady decorating a fan [M.0460].

Also related may be two later pastels, Design for a Mosaic [M.1226] and The Japanese Dress [M.1227], completed in the 1890s.

Technique

In April 1873 Whistler wrote to Henry Cole describing the various stages and problems of preparing the figure or figures for arches in South Kensington Museum:

'When I first wrote to your son, I expected to complete the Japanese "Gold Girl" within a very few days. Almost immediately upon that letter my model broke down from over work ...

It has been impossible for me to push this more rapidly ... Tomorrow evening I believe that the traced cartoon will be ready for photographing and enlarging upon the big canvass - and if you will have it sent for and put at once in hand, I will myself attend and assist all the next day - when by Monday night it will be doubtless ready for hanging -

... if it be impossible to work at the photographing on Sunday next, ... you shall have the cartoon and canvass on the Monday - and my pupils shall work upon it during my absence, and I engage myself to return it to you colored and ready to hang on the 1st. of May.' 1

It is not clear what the figure of a 'Gold Girl' represented. It is possible that Venus [M.0357], the only known full-scale cartoon by Whistler, was supposed to be transferred to canvas as the 'Gold Girl', while the oil sketch Tanagra [YMSM 092] was 'the small Gold Girl' mentioned in a letter to A. S. Cole.

However, there are several drawings that may be related to the commission, and it seems likely that there were at least two distinct series of studies.