Notes for James McNeill Whistler: The Three White Girls


Charles D. Tarlton

 

* Some critics have made the case for a fourth White Girl, the painting (below) now called Harmony in Grey and Peach Colour, held in the Harvard Art Museum (oil on canvas, 193 × 101 cm, 19874), and known by various other titles – The White Girl No IV, The White Woman, and The White Girl.  For reasons having to do with the composition and color scheme of the painting, the changing state of the work over time (it was a tone time virtually destroyed by Whistler himself), and the lack of a certain diaphanous quality present in the other three, I have not included it in this study. 

 


**

*** Whistler’s sketch included in the letter to Fantin-Latour.

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