Titles

One principal title is known:

• 'A White Note' (1888, New English Art Club). 1
• 'Note Blanche. - (A White Note.)' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 2
• 'Joe, Note Blanche' (1908, Pennell). 3
• 'Note Blanche' (1921, Pennell). 4
• 'A White Note' (1980, YMSM). 5

'A White Note' is the preferred title.

Description

A three-quarter-length portrait in vertical format. A young woman with long wavy dark red hair stands in profile to left, looking out of a window. She wears a white chemise with low neckline under an off-white robe or dressing gown with full sleeves. Her hands are clasped in front of her waist. Through the window is a landscape, under a grey sky, with, in the foreground, a field of ripe corn. There is a wooded hill in the distance, and a steam locomotive travelling from right to left in a cutting in front of the trees.

Site

It was probably painted in or near Guéthary, Basses-Pyrénées, where Whistler also painted Blue and Silver: Blue Wave, Biarritz [YMSM 041]. 6

Sitter

Joanna Hiffernan (b. ca 1843-d.1886), Whistler's chief model and partner in the 1860s. She also posed in white for Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl [YMSM 038], Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl [YMSM 052], Symphony in White, No. 3 [YMSM 061], The Artist's Studio [YMSM 062], and The Artist in his Studio (Whistler in his Studio) [YMSM 063].

Comments

The inclusion of a locomotive in a picture by Whistler is unusual, but it may reflect attitudes towards contemporary subject matter associated with the Realist master, Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). 7