Titles

Recorded titles are as follows:

• 'Symphony in White' (n.d., label on verso).
• 'Symphony in White. The Girl in White Muslin Dress' (in or after 1903, label on verso).
• 'Dames-portret' (1956, Singer Museum). 1
• 'Jonge vrouw in witte japon' (1962, Singer Museum). 2

The preferred title, 'Young woman in a white dress', is a translation of the 1962 Dutch title.

Description

A half-length portrait of a woman in three-quarter view to right. She wears a white dress, and her dark hair is pulled up into a big bun at the top and back of her head.

Sitter

Unknown.

If, as is possible, the painting was repaired by Walter Greaves (1846-1930), then the model could be one of his sisters.

Greaves' portrait, The Green Dress (ca 1875, Tate Britain) shows a model (probably his sister) who has slightly similar features. In her interesting thesis 'A Ghost of a Portrait', Elsemieke van Rietschoten discusses Greaves's relationship with Whistler in subject matter and technique, admitting that this is difficult due to the lack of a comprehensive catalogue of his work and the almost total lack of technical research, but, she concludes 'The attention to detail in Greaves’ portraits of his sisters does not resemble the free brushwork of the Singer picture.' 3

Whistler's biographers, the Pennells, commented, when they saw it in 1910, 'It might be one of the Greek group of his friends, an Ionides or a Spartali.' 4 Presumably basing his comment on this source, the Laren Museum Director Rudolph de Lorm suggested that it was 'waarschijnlijk een portret van een dochter van kunstverzamelaar Ionides' ('probably a portrait of a daughter of art collector Ionides'). 5 Whistler's patron Alexander Constantine Ionides (1810-1890) had five children including two daughters, Aglaia Coronio (1834-1906) and Chariclea Anthea Euterpe Dannreuther (1844–1923). There is, however, no record of Whistler painting their portraits.

Comments

The authors of this catalogue raisonné do not think that, despite recent publications and publicity, the research by the Singer Museum, Laren (admittedly incomplete) proves that the painting, in its current state, shows the hand of James McNeill Whistler.