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

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Butterfly

Composition


                    Butterfly, Library Of Congress
Butterfly, Library Of Congress

A design for Whistler 1892 [more] . The dancing butterfly is a wordless comment on the quotation from John Ruskin (1819-1900), 'We can paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up, but we cannot imitate the Ocean or the Alps...'. The quotation was used beside the entry for Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean [YMSM 072] in Whistler's 1892 exhibition catalogue (cat.no. 15), where the butterfly was reduced to a width of 11 mm (7/16").

Last updated: 19th March 2021 by Margaret