After declaring bankruptcy in 1879, Whistler defaced a number of his unfinished paintings so that they would be unsalable. This work, which likely depicts his model and eventual mistress Maud Franklin, is one of
those paintings. Though Whistler’s marks were later removed, signs of the work’s incomplete nature remain: for instance, Whistler did not finish the woman’s hands, and his application of paint is uneven. Still,
it serves as a noteworthy representation of the artist’s interests and techniques. His engagement with japonisme — the European infatuation with Japanese art and culture — is evident in the geometric patterning
of the foreshortened ground plane and in the inclusion of such motifs as fans and blossoms. The American artist Robert Henri wrote that this painting evoked “the sensation of the silence of velvet. . . . [W]e are
held a moment and are deflected to areas where we seem to pass through air. . . . [I]t is a fantasy, it is a spiritual expression.”
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