Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian

Whistler titled his pictures the way a composer names music, a harmony, an arrangement, here mother-of-pearl and silver, because he wanted them seen as combinations of tone rather than stories about people. The woman standing with her back to us is Ethel Whibley, his sister-in-law and secretary, in a gray silk evening gown; the black bolero with its layered sleeves gives the Spanish note in the title. One historian said it is not a portrait of a person but of a dress. Whistler picked at it on and off for years, into the last decade of his life. It came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where it hangs today.