Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

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YMSM 256
Note en rouge: L'Eventail

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1883/1884
Collection: Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Accession Number: F1913.91a-b
Medium: oil
Support: wood
Size: 88 x 147 mm (3 1/2 x 5 3/4")
Signature: butterfly
Inscription: none
Frame: Small Dowdeswell, 1884 [11.1 cm]

Note en rouge: L'Eventail

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

  • 'Note en rouge. L'Eventail' (1887, Petit). 1
  • 'The Little Red Note' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 2
  • 'Note en rouge: L'Eventail' (1980, YMSM). 3

The descriptive title of 1887 (with modified punctuation) has been accepted. The preferred title is therefore 'Note en rouge: L'Eventail'. 'L'Eventail' is French for the fan.

Description

Note en rouge: L'Eventail , Freer Gallery of Art
Note en rouge: L'Eventail , Freer Gallery of Art

A figure study in horizontal format. A woman in a white dress with red-trimmed skirt (or white tunic over a red skirt) lies on a couch, her head to right. She holds a very large red open fan that conceals much of her torso and sticks up above her. The background is very dark.

Sitter

Not identified.

Comments

Curry suggested that this was an explicitly 'suggestive' figure, the finger on her lips, and the open fan, being recognised as inviting gestures in 19th century 'fan language'. 4

Notes:

1: Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 170).

2: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 54).

3: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 256).

4: Curry 1984 [more] , p. 145, pl. 50.

Last updated: 17th December 2020 by Margaret