Symphonie in Fleischfarbe und Rosa: Porträt von Mrs. Frances Leyland

Whistler began this at Speke Hall near Liverpool in the autumn of 1871, a commission from Frederick Leyland, a shipowner who had made his money running steamers out of the Mersey. Through the spring of 1872 Frances Leyland sat almost daily at Whistler's Chelsea studio, in a gown he designed for the picture, loose and unboned with a pink train, at a time when women of her class were laced into corsets. He tuned the whole setting to the pinks that set off her auburn hair. In 1876 he took over the decoration of Leyland's dining room, filled it with blue and gold peacocks, and billed him far beyond what Leyland thought had been agreed. The two never made it up. The sittings ended, Whistler held on to the portrait for years, and it reached Leyland only after a friend mediated. Henry Clay Frick bought it in 1916.