James McNeill Whistler - Symphony in White no.1. 1862
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Symphony in White no.1. 1862
The White Girl Portrait of Joanna Hiffernan
108x214cm oil/canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
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From National Gallery of Art, Washington:
When Whistler submitted The White Girl to the Paris Salon in 1863, the tradition–bound jury refused to show the work. Napoleon III invited avant–garde artists who had been denied official space to show their paintings in a "Salon des Refusés," an exhibition that triggered enormous controversy. Whistler's work met with severe public derision, but a number of artists and critics praised his entry. In the Gazette des Beaux–Arts, Paul Manz referred to it as a "symphony in white," noting a musical correlation to Whistler's paintings that the artist himself would address in the early 1870s, when he retitled a number of works "Nocturne," "Arrangement," "Harmony," and "Symphony."