Sinfonía en blanco n.º 3

When Whistler showed this at the Royal Academy in 1867, the title puzzled people. Why call a picture of two women in white a symphony? That was the point. Following ideas he took from the poet Baudelaire, Whistler wanted the painting judged as an arrangement of colour and mood, the way you hear music, not read for a story. The women don't act anything out. One reclines on a sofa, the other slumps on the floor in warmer, paler tones. His model and companion Joanna Hiffernan is the woman on the left. He worked on it so long that he repainted the date in the corner, turning a 5 into a 7 to mark how much it had shifted along the way.