File:Life of James McNeill Whistler, (1911) (14596897419).jpg

Identifier: jamesmcnei00penn (find matches)
Title: Life of James McNeill Whistler,
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Pennell, Elizabeth Robins,
Subjects: American Art
Publisher: J. B. Lippincott company
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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to suppress the background, to put thefigures into the atmosphere in which they stood, without accessories.The problem was the atmospheric envelope, to make the figures standin this atmosphere, as far within their frames as he stood from themwhen he painted, a problem at which he worked as long as he lived. Mrs. Leyland had more leisure than her husband, and the sittingsamused her. She had sat to Rossetti, she was to sit to others. Shewas beautiful, with wonderful red hair. Whistler made a dry-pointof her, The Velvet Gozvn, and in black velvet she wanted to be painted.But he preferred a dress in harmony with her hair, and designed rosedraperies falling in sweeping curves, and he placed her against a rose-flushed wall with a spray of rose almond blossoms at her side. In noother portrait did he attempt a scheme of colour at once so sumptuousand so delicate. The pose was natural to her, she said, though he madea number of pastel schemes before he painted it. Her back is turned,124 (1873
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SYMPHONY IN WHITE. XO. IITHE LITTLE WHITE GIRL OIL In the possession of Arthur Studd. Esq. Showing the original frame with early Rutterflies and Swinburnes verses on it.Photo loaned by W. H. Low, Esq. (See page 91) « U i tl II Portraits her arms fall loosely, her hands clasped behind her, her head in profile.Mrs. Leyland remembered days when, at the end of the pose, theportrait looked as if it needed only a few hours work. But in themorning she would find it rubbed out and all the work to be done again.Notwithstanding the innumerable sittings, one of Whistlers models,Maud Franklin, whom he so often etched and painted, was called into pose for the gown. Whistler knew what he wanted, and nothingelse would satisfy him. It must be beautiful to be worthy of theweariness it caused her, he told Mrs. Leyland, and he was trying forthe little more that meant perfection. The portrait was never finished,and yet it could not be lovelier. It was a problem, not of luminousdark, but of luminous ligh

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