Titles

Only one title has been suggested, with minor punctuation changes:

• 'Flesh Colour and Silver. The Card Players' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 1
• 'Flesh Colour and Silver – The Card Players' (1936, University of Glasgow). 2
• 'Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players' (1908, YMSM). 3

For consistency with other entries, 'Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players' is the preferred title.

Description

A figure study in horizontal format. Two girls, clad only in head scarves or caps, sit facing each other on a long straight-backed sofa, playing cards. Their bodies are at right angles to the viewer and their pose is rather uncomfortable: the girl on the right, facing left, has her right foot hooked under her left knee, but the other girl (facing right) has both feet awkwardly positioned on the ground. The background is a dingy yellow ochre, the white sofa appears mostly grey.

Sitter

The models for the figures in this painting were Gladys Winifred Carrington (1889-1940) and Eva Victoria Carrington (1887-1979) , two sisters who regularly sat for Whistler. They also appear in a number of his pastels, including Two nudes seated on a sofa, one with a cap and fan [M.1531]. Later photographs of Eva, Lady de Clifford, later Mrs Arthur Stock, and Mrs George V. Tate, are reproduced above.

Comments

The subject of card-playing also appears on the recto of a pastel, r.: The Fortune Teller; v.: A nude lying on a sofa [M.1274], dating from the early 1890s. The subject is associated with symbols of fate and fortune.