Whistler, women and fashion

Among the treasures of the Frick Collection in novel York are four full-length portraits by the agency of Whistler, three of which provided the main raison d'etre for the novel exhibition 'Whistler, Women, & Fashion'. The fourth, Arrangement in black and gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, was the make submissive of its own exhibition in 1995 Since Henry Clay Frick's will prohibits the loan of works from his bequest, this is an exhibition that could solitary happen at the Frick, on the contrary that institution--wonderful as it is in in like manner many ways--was not the ideal setting for of the like kind an undertaking. The paintings, with sole one significant exception, were all squeez into the Oval space in the main suite of galleries behind the Garden Court, displacing four Gainsboroughs and Van Dyck normally set there, while the rest of the exhibit was in the basement.

The Oval play contained not only the Frick's hold three ladies, but five further portraits or quasi-portraits, a number which grew to six upon 1 July, when Harmony in grey and green: Miss Cicely Alexander (Fig. 1) from the Tate travelled a dozen stops south following the close of the 'Manet/Velazquez' exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. At the Frick, it hung a small in number inches from Symphony in muscle and fat colour and pink: Portrait of Mr Frances Leyland (Fig. 2) providing a brief opportunity of seeing side-by-side sum of two units supreme masterpieces of English Aestheticism. Because of their differing figural scales, different framing (the Frick's Mr Leyland still has its original, intricately ornamented frame), and radically different palettes, the sum of two units works, although painted at almost the same point of time in the early 1870s, direct the eyeed surprisingly dissimilar. In particular, the juxtaposition was a dramatic demonstration of the fact that when the artist titled individual work 'Harmony in grey and green' and the other 'Symphony in muscle and fat colour and pink', he meant what he said.

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Another comparison encouraged by dint of the exhibition--and one that will at no time be possible elsewhere--was between the early music in white, no. 2: The little white girl (Fig. 3) another Tare loan, and a work which must have been in Whistler's mind when he painted it: the great Ingres Portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville. It was just possible to diocese them both at the same time through standing in the Garden Court and viewing the Ingres at an angle from one side the mullions and glass panes of a doorway, on the other hand a little back-and-forthing proved more rewarding. Despite the prominent mirrors in the one and the other works and the consequent compositional parallels, what became immediately striking was in what way painterly Whistler appeared in contrast to Ingres, a contrast the younger artist did not consider entirely to his advantage, lamenting presently after painting The little white girl (in a alphabetic character to Henri Fantin-Latour): 'Ah! by what means I wish I had been a pupil of Ingres! What a master he would have been.' It is hard to imagine what kind of artist Whistler would have become had he studied beneath Ingres, but what we can reasonably surmise is that he might have delineated with greater precision the clothes his make submissives wear. On the sleeve of the dres worn through Ingres's Comtesse, we see lace trim, a crook folds, a pleat, all recorded with exquisite precision. A gaze at Whistler's corresponding sleeve reveals curiously interlaced ribbon-like brush knocks perhaps intended to suggest lace, on the other hand only a suggestion of it--what his futurity disciple Walter Sickert would terminus 'wriggle and chiffon'. In an exhibition entitled 'Whistler, Women & Fashion', Whistler frustrated fashion zealots by his lack of belong to with details of attire, or indeed by the agency of hiding the details behind brushwork or the tonal murk of of the like kind paintings as Arrangement in brown and black: Portrait of Miss Rosa Corder. (1) Comparison not sole with the Ingres but also with earlier portraits in the Frick, from Van Dyck to Gainsborough and Lawrence, made evident in what way relatively little attention Whistler devot to what we normally think of as fashion. He was manifestly aware of what his sitters wore--and in the portraits of Mr Leyland and Cicely Alexander smooth designed or partly designed it--but, rather than describing and recording dres and fashion, he busyed them as notes in his visual symphonies, harmonies, and arrangements.

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Preceding 'Fashion' in the exhibition's title was the word 'Women' a certain number of memorable remarks by the artist, notably his refusal to allow us to take any interest in the pattern for his best-known portrait--that of his mother--suggest he used his female subdues much as he used their clothes, for objects other than portraying them for their be in possession of sakes. But the exhibition and its admirable catalogue make clear that this self-assertive and occasionally belligerent man did have delicate sympathetic and frequently loving feelings towards his designs mistresses, and other female sitters, and a source of real pleasure was the aura of affection and profitable will radiating from the works upon the walls, many of which were not portraits by se. The little white girl, for example, is a 'fancy picture' in the eighteenth-century faculty of perception Jo Hiffernan, Whistler's mistress from c1860 to 1866 was the design but not the subject. Similarly, Ethel Philip, Whistler's sister-in-law--whom he obviously adored--posed for sum of two units later paintings hung nearby, Mother of pearl and silver: The Andalusian and R and black: The fan, the couple of which were treated as portraits in the catalogue, on the contrary strictly speaking, are nothing of the kind. Like his friend Rossetti painting Fanny Cornforth as Lady Lilith or Jane Morris as Proserpine, Whistler wanted the individual model before him, on the other hand refused to define himself as a simple portrait painter. Even when he painted sitters like Mr Leyland and Cicely Alexander upon commission, their portraits were exhibited with (and have retained) titles proclaiming that they are about something other as indeed they are. Whether they were felicitous as portraits is open to question. Rossetti remarked that Mr Leyland was 'a graceful design', on the other hand added 'though I cannot diocese that it is at all a likeness'. And upon p. 120 of the catalogue of 'Whistler, Women & Fashion' a photograph of the unprepossessing Rosa Corder demonstrates what magic Whistler effected when painting his elegant portrait of her, turning base metal into gold