Titles

Minor variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Portrait of Miss Lilian Woakes' (1980, YMSM). 1
• 'Miss Lillian Woakes' (2015, Phillips Collection). 2

'Portrait of Miss Lilian Woakes' is the preferred title.

Description

A half-length portrait of a young woman in vertical format. She has dark curly hair, and looks directly at the viewer. The light comes from the left. Her dress is white with grey gathered or puffed sleeves; it has complex folds and frills, a pale blue trim around the neckline, and a pale pink bow above her breast.

Sitter

Lilian Woakes (b. 1866) was twenty-two or twenty-three when she posed. Whistler seems to have met her father Edward G. Woakes (1837-1912) through his brother William McNeill Whistler (1836-1900).