Viola e rosa: i Lange Leizen dei Sei Marchi

In January 1864 Whistler's mother arrived in London from America, driven out of a Richmond under blockade in the Civil War, and moved into his house on Lindsey Row in Chelsea. His Irish model and companion Joanna Hiffernan had to be moved out before she came. He painted this the same year, and Hiffernan is usually taken to be the woman in it, brush in hand among his own Chinese blue and white porcelain. Lange leizen was the name Dutch dealers gave to the long thin women painted on that ware, and the six marks of the title are the reign marks on the underside of a jar. The picture went to Philadelphia in 1917 with the collection of the lawyer John Johnson.