Harmony in Flesh Colour and Red

For years nobody knew what Whistler had called this picture. It was never exhibited in his lifetime, and when it turned up at Christie's in London in 1929 it was catalogued as Three Ladies in Red, on a terrace, and sold for about 12 pounds. Its real title survived on an old photograph of the painting, which Whistler had inscribed Harmony in Flesh Color and Red and signed with his butterfly around 1881.

There is no terrace. The three women are indoors, two seated and one standing, all in coral-red dresses with pale stoles, in a peach-pink room hung with palm fans above a brown and cream dado, with a blue and white rug on the floor. It dates from the 1860s, though scholars disagree on the exact years, a time when Whistler was trying out groups of women in fashionable dress among fans, rugs and porcelain. Only the central woman's face is worked in any detail. The paint is thick and creamy and roughly brushed, with outlines shifted everywhere, and five more fans were sketched onto the wall in wax crayon over the paint.

In 1930 it belonged to the novelist Arthur Morrison, known for his stories of London's East End, and the museum in Boston bought it in 1960. The small butterfly signature at the left edge is probably not Whistler's own. It does not appear in the early photographs.