Harmonie en gris et vert : Mademoiselle Cicely Alexander

William Cleverly Alexander, a London banker, asked Whistler in 1872 for a portrait of his daughter Agnes. Whistler asked to paint the younger girl instead, Cicely, who was eight. She posed twice a week, and by the end there had been more than 70 sittings. Whistler had specified the dress himself, fine Indian muslin with no blue in it, frills on the skirt and at the neck, and sent word to particular London shops about the material. Cicely remembered afterwards that he never let her shift her position, that he would dart at the canvas and then dart back from it, and that she sometimes ended a session in tears. Whistler's mother sat in the room as chaperone. When the picture was first shown, in London in 1874, it was listed only as a portrait, Harmony in Grey and Green. The sitter's name was attached to it later.