白のシンフォニー第2番:白衣の少女

Whistler painted this in 1864, and the woman leaning against the mantel is Joanna Hiffernan, his Irish model and companion. Look at the mirror behind her: her face returns in the glass, but the reflection seems older and more melancholy than the woman herself, as if the painting is watching her drift into thought. Whistler's friend, the poet Swinburne, was so taken with it that he wrote verses about that very moment before the mirror. Whistler had them printed on gold paper and pasted onto the frame. He originally called the picture simply The Little White Girl, then renamed it a symphony, wanting people to read it the way they hear music, for its arrangement of whites and tones rather than for any story. The blue and white porcelain and the sprig of azalea in her hand were the fashionable Japanese taste London had just discovered.