白のシンフォニー第2番：小さな白の少女

A woman in white leans on a mantelpiece, a fan in her hand, her face echoed in the mirror. On her finger is a wedding ring, though she and the painter never married. A poet wrote verses for its frame.

The story behind the painting

Whistler painted The Little White Girl in the winter of 1864, again with Joanna Hiffernan, his lover, as model. It followed directly from The White Girl of 1861 to 1862, later called Symphony in White, No. 1. In 1865 the new picture was shown at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, the same institution that had rejected its predecessor in 1862. Whistler had met the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne in 1862, and their close friendship shaped the story of this painting.

What to look for

The woman stands in three-quarter length by a fireplace, a mirror above it, holding a fan and wearing a white dress. Her ring rests on the mantelpiece and becomes a focal point. The fan and the vase on the mantel are oriental touches, signs of the Japonisme popular at the time. Soft, round figures are set against harder geometric shapes, with brushy, transparent touches beside dense, vigorous strokes. The picture is small, about 77 by 51 cm, and offers few clues to its meaning.

Meaning and intent

The ring was deliberate; it had not been in The White Girl. Across his pictures Hiffernan moves from a prostitute in Wapping, to a mistress in The White Girl, to a wife here, which also mirrors Whistler's own move toward legitimacy in the English art world. The ring also alludes to the sacrament of marriage, giving a religious note to the aestheticism he and Swinburne were developing. Swinburne's poem Before the Mirror, written on gold paper, was pasted on the frame. Whistler insisted it was written after the painting, proof that painting could inspire poetry rather than serve it.

Legacy

English critics were not impressed: one called the picture bizarre, another generally grimy grey. The Times was kinder, sensing thought and passion beneath the plain features. Later Whistler renamed it Symphony in White, No. 2, to stress composition over subject. In 1900 he sent it to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, where he won a grand prix for paintings. Its first owner was the wallpaper maker John Gerald Potter; Arthur Studd owned it from 1893 and gave it to the National Gallery in 1919, and in 1951 it moved to the Tate.