The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Symphony in White and Red is one of the 'Six Projects' and dates from 1868. ¹ The 'Six Projects' comprise Venus y082, Symphony in Green and Violet y083, Variations in Blue and Green y084, Symphony in White and Red y085 and Symphony in Blue and Pink y086 and The White Symphony: Three Girls y087. This group of paintings was mentioned by William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) in his diary for 28 July 1868, when he wrote that Whistler was 'doing on a largish scale for Leyland the subject of women and flowers.' ²

Symphony in White and Red, Freer Gallery of Art

It was described by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) in the spring of 1868 as 'the third of these studies [in which] the sea is fresher, lightly kindling under a low clear wind; at the end of a pier a boat is moored and women in the delicate bright robes of eastern fashion and colour so dear to the painter are about to enter it.' ³

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Symphony in White and Red' (1903, R. Birnie Philip) ⁴
• 'Symphony in White and Red' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). ⁵
• 'No. 4 Symphony in White and Red' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ⁶
• 'Symphony in White and Red' (1980, YMSM). ⁷

The White Symphony: Three Girls y087 had been exhibited with the title 'Symphony in White and Red' in 1874 and 1887-1888) but this has been altered to avoid confusion.

'Symphony in White and Red' is the preferred title.

Description

Symphony in White and Red, Freer Gallery of Art

A figure composition in horizontal format. Several woman in draped robes stand or sit on a balcony beside the sea. Two or three figures at left, ascending the steps, are indicated very roughly indeed. The central figure, descending the steps, wears a white robe and a pale mauve or blue scarf that blows upwards to the left, behind her; she has a pale purple head-band round her light brown hair. Just to right of centre, a seated woman in a pink robe holds up a red fan. In the lower right foreground there is another figure, sitting on the ground, very roughly indicated.

Sitter

Unidentified.

Technique

Composition

Figures on a balcony, The Hunterian

Whistler made many drawings with variations on the poses of nude and robed figures for the series known as the 'Six Projects'. One, for instance, reproduced above, is on the verso of r.: Draped figures on a bridge; v.: Figures on a balcony m0314; see also r.: Nude leaning back over balcony; v.: Figure composition m0450.

Kiyonaga, Ushiwaka serenading Jorurihime ..., triptych print, modern version, British Museum, 1949,0409,065.1-2

Beatrice and James Whistler owned the centre and right panels of a triptych, a woodcut by Torrii Kiyonaga (1752-1815), Joruri-Himie serenaded by Ushiwaha (reproduced above), which has some affinities of composition with Symphony in White and Red y085, particularly in the relationship of the standing and seated figures on the balcony. It is not known if this woodcut or any other prints by Kiyonaga were in Whistler's collection at the time this picture was painted. This woodcut may have been acquired by Whistler after his bankruptcy in 1879, when all his earlier collections were sold; it was given to the British Museum by Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) in memory of her sister Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896).

Technique

Symphony in White and Red, Freer Gallery of Art

It is painted on a dark grey ground, and freely worked, with numerous pentimenti. The area of the two figures on the left remains barely defined. The blue sea was painted up to and around the figures. A fairly broad brush was used to apply the creamy textured paint, and shows clearly that many colours were mixed with complimentary colours, particularly in the pale pink robes of the woman with the red fan, where the pale white and pink brushstrokes are edged with brown, mauve, and fuchsia pink.

As Anna Greutzner Robins comments, 'The fluidity of the oil colour, dragged with a remarkable freedom of handling across the smooth support, and the reductive combinations of intense colour still amazes viewers.' ⁸

Conservation History

For some time Whistler had five of the 'Projects' hanging in his house in Cheyne Walk. In June 1892 they were cleaned and varnished by Stephen Richards (1844-1900), his picture restorer in London. Whistler then asked David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) to retrieve them from Richards and send them to him in Paris, 'I want my small pictures that you gave him to clean and varnish ... the sketches that used to hang in the dining room, Cheyne Walk ... Do kindly get them off to me at once - tomorrow?' ⁹

When they arrived he wrote to Richards from Paris:

'I have just received the five small paintings on millboard - (sketches of figures & sea) - that you have cleaned & varnished for me. They look pure and brilliant as on the day they were painted! -

But while you were about it, I wish enough you had seen to the condition of their backs - They were put down upon other cardboards some time ago, and they are all loose and bent about now … how is it that they come back to me without their frames? ... I was horrified! However happily they are unharmed.' ¹⁰

According to Freer Gallery conservation files the painting was cradled, cleaned and resurfaced in 1931, resurfaced in 1942, cleaned and surfaced in 1951.

Frame

For some time between 1890 and 1892 Whistler had the so-called 'Six Projects' (actually five!) hanging in his house in Cheyne Walk, although they were not exhibited. The five 'Projects' were certainly framed by 1892, when they were cleaned and varnished by Stephen Richards (1844-1900), but returned to the artist, as he complained 'without their frames.' ¹¹

Whistler Memorial Exhibition, Boston, 1904, GUL Whistler PH6/21

The current Grau-style frame dates from after it was bought by C. L. Freer in 1903. It is of similar construction to the frames on the other 'Projects'. ¹² It was certainly on the frame by 1904, as seen in the photograph above.

History

Provenance

• 1879: probably acquired at Whistler's bankruptcy by Thomas Way (1837-1915), London;
• By 1892: returned to Whistler;
• 1903: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit, in July 1903 for £1000;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

Exhibitions

• 1874: Mr Whistler's Exhibition, Flemish Gallery, 48 Pall Mall, London, 1874.
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 20) as 'Symphony in White and Red'.
• 1904: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 14) as 'No. 4 Symphony in White and Red'.

It was probably shown in the Pall Mall exhibition of 1874 and described by an art critic simply as one of two paintings 'neither of which reveal to us their subject with sufficient clearness. We just perceive a fascination of dimly suggested scheme of colour, and note here and there a graceful attitude defining itself from the obscurity of the general mist.' ¹³

Whistler Memorial Exhibition, Boston, 1904, GUL Whistler PH6/21

C. L. Freer lent the painting to exhibitions in his lifetime, including the Boston exhibition of 1904, where the 'Projects' were exhibited together, as shown in the photograph reproduced above. However, by the terms of Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot now be lent to any other venue.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 85), plate 49, as 'Symphony in White and Red'.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. nos. 314, 450).

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 1874: Mr Whistler's Exhibition, Flemish Gallery, 48 Pall Mall, London, 1874.
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 20) as 'Symphony in White and Red'.
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 14) as 'No. 4 Symphony in White and Red'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Exhibition of Mr. Whistler's Paintings and Drawings', Globe, London, 20 June 1874, p. 2.

Journals 1855-1905

• Matsuki, Bumkio (ed.), 'Whistler Memorial Exhibition', Lotus, vol. 1, no. 1, (Special Holiday Number in Memoriam: James A. McNeill Whistler), December 1903, pp. 7-9, at p. 9.

• Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Essays and Studies, London, 1875, p. 360.
• Rossetti, William Michael (ed.), Rossetti Papers, 1862-1870, London, 1903, p. 320.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907, p 158 (cat. no. 20).
• Merrill, Linda, The Peacock Room. A Cultural Biography, New Haven and London, 1998, pp. 67, 95-98, 137, 338, repr. pl. 2.15.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, p. 28, fig. 20.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 154 (cat. no. 34).
• Taylor, Hilary, James McNeill Whistler, London, 1978, pl. 32.

Books, General

• Prettejohn, Elizabeth, Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 61.
• Taylor, Hilary, James McNeill Whistler, London, 1978.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 107-10, 291-92 (pl. 9).
• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 12 (03.177).

EXHIBITION:

• Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (cat. no. 14).
• Glazer, Lee, The Lost Symphony: Whistler and the Perfection of Art, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2016.

Journals 1906-Present

• Hobbs, Susan, 'A Connoisseur's Vision: The American Collection of Charles Lang Freer', American Art Review, vol. 4, August 1977, pp. 76-101, at p. 90.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1903.177a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 255).

Other

• Chisaburo, Yamada, (ed.), Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium, (Committee for the Year 2001), Tokyo 1980.
• Gorder, Judith Elaine, James McNeill Whistler: A Study in the oil Paintings 1855-1869, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1973.
• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.