A Technical Study of A White Note and Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl

James McNeill Whistler’s romantic partner and muse Joanna Hiffernan (1843–1886) is represented in two notably different paintings from the early 1960s, A White Note 1862 (YMSM 044; fig.1) and Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl 1864 (YMSM 052; Tate N03418; fig.2).1 A technical study of the two paintings offers a glimpse into the artist’s early working process.2 A White Note is a personal portrait, most likely painted during the couple’s travels in France in 1862, and was not exhibited until 1888.3 Symphony in White, No. 2, by contrast, was painted for exhibition at the Royal Academy, London; it was finished in 1864 and exhibited the following year as The Little White Girl.4 Whistler later renamed the painting as Symphony in White, No. 2 – along with an earlier painting, The White Girl 1861 (YMSM 038; National Gallery of Art, Washington), which he renamed Symphony in White, No. 1 – after he exhibited a third portrait, Symphony in White, No. 3 1865–7 (YMSM 061; Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham), in 1867.

The surface finishes of A White Note and Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, hereafter Symphony in White, No. 2, differ substantially. A White Note is a sketch, with the rapid and spontaneous application of paint seeming to capture a fleeting moment. However, technical analysis shows that, like Symphony in White, No. 2, A White Note was constructed through a process of revision and sustained experimentation. This article explores similarities and differences in technique between the two paintings to illustrate Whistler’s development away from the realism pioneered by the painter Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) towards his own aesthetic vision, which was heavily influenced by East Asian art. From the early 1860s he became a connoisseur and collector of Japanese prints and garments, as well as Chinese blue and white porcelains. These objects inspired Whistler to prioritise the formal qualities of colour and composition over narrative content, in contrast to artistic convention, thereby seeking harmony across the surface through the subtle repetition of key colours.5

A White Note is also discussed in relation to Whistler’s graphic exploration of Hiffernan across etchings, drawings and magazine illustrations produced in the 1860s. These works demonstrate how Whistler used printing and drawing as a critical site for testing pictorial strategies, later consolidating them in his Symphony paintings and his amendments to A White Note.

A White Note

A White Note features Hiffernan in three-quarter profile, wearing a white chemise and shawl, resting her right arm on a windowsill and looking over the landscape beyond. There is little contemporary documentation relating to the painting, and no preparatory drawings are known to survive.6 Hiffernan’s pose, however, can be placed within a range of studies Whistler made of her throughout the 1860s, especially the engraving The Nun in ‘Count Burckhardt’ 1862 (M306; fig.3) and the figure on the right in his Study of Draped Figures 1864–5 (YMSM 058; fig.4). Whistler’s friends and biographers Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell describe him falling ill from exposure to lead white paint while painting Symphony in White, No. 1 and the pair subsequently travelling to the Pyrenees for his health.7 Margaret MacDonald considers A White Note to have been either started or continued in Guéthary, on the coast south of Biarritz, where the couple stayed during October and November 1862.8 This is supported by studying the date below Whistler’s diagonal signature in the bottom left, painted in dark grey. Enhanced infrared reflectography (IRR) makes clear the tail of a ‘2’ and a full stop (fig.5), similar in style to those inscribed on the artist’s painting The Last of Old Westminster 1862 (YMSM 039; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). We know from Whistler’s correspondence that they were staying at the Maison de la Croix, belonging to a Monsieur Louis Daguerre (now 1 Chemin du Port), situated between the train line and the sea.9 The date and setting are supported by the presence of a steam train running through the landscape in the distance (fig.6). If we assume Whistler painted Hiffernan in that house, maps confirm that the composition is orientated inland and that the trainline, which would have run directly beneath the window, has been moved further into the background. The weather was poor during their stay, impeding Whistler’s en plein air projects, and perhaps A White Note is the product of their retreat indoors.10

A White Note is painted on a plain, relatively fine-weave linen canvas, with an average density of 27.9 warp threads per centimetre and 27.1 weft threads per centimetre, very similar to that used for Symphony in White, No. 1.11 The latter stretcher and canvas were supplied in 1861 by Hardy-Alan, 1 rue Childebert, where Whistler appears to have purchased many of his materials when in Paris.12 It is possible the canvas for A White Note came from the same supplier, but more weave analysis of paintings from this period is needed for comparison.

A White Note’s current stretcher likely dates to the twentieth century and was probably replaced when the painting was lined – a process where a new canvas is attached with adhesive to the back of the original canvas to provide structural stability. X-radiography reveals cusping – the distortion of the canvas weave at the points it was stretched and tacked to the stretcher – along the vertical and bottom edges of the original canvas, indicating the painting was primed while on a stretcher of a similar size as today (fig.7). The lack of cusping on the top edge indicates that this edge was trimmed by a few centimetres, possibly due to damage or to fit a change of stretcher or frame. Later, an additional strip of canvas has been used to extend the top of the painting again by 1.5 centimetres.13 A mid-grey ground layer covers the whole canvas, containing lead white, coarse bone black and traces of iron oxide pigments. The brushy application indicates that it was artist applied rather than commercially prepared. While white ground layers were popular and readily available from artists’ suppliers during this period in England, we know Whistler was already experimenting with darker underlayers in the 1860s to create a cooler, more subdued tone visible in thinner paint passages.14 A similar grey underlayer is visible between brushstrokes on The Thames in Ice 1860 (YMSM 036; fig.8) and Whistler also used a grey layer either as an overall ground or as local underpainting in Symphony in White, No. 2.15

Cross-sections from A White Note show the ground was not completely dry when Whistler started to paint (fig.9), indicating his impatience to put paint to canvas. Mapping out the painting in the early stages, a thin wash of brown paint visible under magnification defines Hiffernan’s face, neck, chest and arms, both outlining the figure and providing shade in the final image. Prussian blue paint outlines the shape and folds of the chemise over the grey ground. Whistler also blocked in the composition broadly using colours relevant to the final paint layers. The cobalt blue sky was underpainted with a darker wash, visible in a paint cross-section from this area (fig.10), and a thin green underpaint visible under magnification extends across most of the bottom third of the painting. Whistler left a reserve – an area of unpainted ground – for the head and upper body (visible in the X-radiograph, see fig.7), a technique also employed for the left figure in At the Piano 1858–9 (YMSM 024; Taft Museum, Cincinnati). This indicates that these areas of Hiffernan’s body were planned early in the painting process. The grey ground functions as the mid-tone in this area, aiding speed of execution. For example, instead of painting her eye, Whistler has simply left a triangle of exposed grey ground visible (fig.11), also seen in the later sketch Study of Draped Figures.

The paint layers are similar in quality to his earlier Symphony in White, No. 1 and were applied rapidly with a variety of implements, with paint thick enough to retain brushstrokes and create impasto peaks. The surface of A White Note shows Courbet’s influence on Whistler during this period and a rejection of the highly blended academic technique in favour of a wide and expressive range of paint applications.16 Whistler used a palette knife both to add and remove paint, applying paint in and above the treeline and scraping back the sky in the centre firmly enough to reveal canvas. The figure was painted in long brushstrokes with a narrow (4 millimetre) blunt-ended brush (fig.12), the result a prototype of his later more fluid ‘ribbon’ brushstrokes.17 The narrow brush was used for the majority of the painting, but a broader (10 millimetre) brush was used to apply lilac in the sky, and a wider (15 millimetre), square brush was used for the brown paint in the lower left. Similar sized brushes were used for The Last of Old Westminster 1862 (YMSM 039; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), painted the same year.18

In 1868 Whistler wrote enthusiastically to his friend the artist Henri Fantin-Latour of ‘the same colour reappearing continually here and there like the same thread in an embroidery – and so on with the others – more or less according to their importance – the whole forming in this way a harmonious pattern’.19 Close looking at A White Note demonstrates that Whistler was already practising this idea in the early 1860s, incorporating harmonising flecks of primary colours across the flesh tones and dress, and repeating a core palette throughout the figure. The face was rendered with a few summary brushstrokes using a mixture of lead white, red and yellow earth pigments and cobalt blue, with touches of pure colour remaining unblended (see fig.11).20 The tuft of hair on Hiffernan’s forehead consists of several brushstrokes of unmixed red, blue and yellow paint colours that give an impression of spontaneity, almost as though they were applied straight from the tube (fig.13). The same threads of colour reappear to a lesser extent in the ruffles of the bodice, and microscopy that shows the mixed whites and greys in her clothing contain red lake and a blue pigment as well as black and white, tying the dress together with other areas of the composition.

Despite the wide range of modern green pigments available, Whistler maintained a somewhat limited palette by mixing his own green for the trees and landscape using Prussian blue. He showed less restraint when it came to his choice of yellows, using at least four different pigments: strontium yellow, cadmium yellow, ochre and yellow lake. The latter might be the two tubes of madder-root yellow he requested to be sent to him quickly from his supplier in Paris while in Guéthary.21 The autumnal tones of the deciduous trees are achieved by adding touches of cadmium orange, red and brown earths and red lake, and there is a similarly broad range of pigments in the hair including strands of fluorescent madder lake.22 The steam train was articulated with two strokes of a mixed green (see fig.6). The bottom stroke is broken, implying the kinetic energy of the wheels, and a precisely applied dab of madder forms the funnel. In the sky, Whistler worked his paint wet-in-wet. He picks up the paint of the underlying shawl by adding the hair on top before the paint beneath was fully dry, indicating rapid execution over a short period of time. There are similarities in Whistler’s handling of paint in this sketch and The Thames in Ice. For example, the dry brush, loaded with thick paint, skips over the canvas weave in both the rigging in The Thames and the shawl of A White Note.

In a precursor to his later technique, Whistler also rubbed down the ground layer in the face, exposing the tops of the canvas weave (fig.14). This contributes to the modelling of the cheeks and upper lip. The conservator Joyce Hill Stoner has noted that in the 1860s, Whistler generally covered his rubbing and scraping down with fresh paint in his finished works.23 Some areas of A White Note do appear unfinished, such as Hiffernan’s left arm, which was scraped back with a palette knife and left somewhat unresolved. It is remarkable how many changes Whistler made to A White Note, given the apparent spontaneity of the brushwork. The costume became less formal, and the composition more intimate as the painting progressed. Whistler’s painting process was laborious and involved many revisions. He wrote to Fantin-Latour in 1864: ‘When will my execution be quicker[?] when I say execution I mean something quite different – you understand – I produce very little, because I scrape off so much’.24 Technical images of A White Note support this. A combination of X-radiography, transmitted light photography and examination under the microscope show that initially Hiffernan’s hands and right arm were positioned lower down. Whistler raised the right arm to rest on the windowsill and twisted Hiffernan’s body back towards the viewer (fig.15).25

The clothing worn by Hiffernan changed dramatically. The lower neckline in the final painting suggests indoor dress, too informal to wear in company, yet a higher neckline was initially painted in dark blue and is rendered visible using transmitted infrared imaging (TIRR) (fig.16). It continues underneath the flesh paint in the chest, which is thickly applied to prevent the blue beneath from showing through. The shawl is underpainted in black and dark blue, as is Hiffernan’s left arm, in contrast to the reserve left for the rest of the upper body. The area around her left arm has been heavily scraped back, but there is evidence this arm may originally have been covered with the shawl or a pagoda style sleeve that has been partially removed and replaced with the sketchily painted forearm.26 There are areas of chequered patterning visible in black and pink in the skirt in the lower-right corner, perhaps remnants from this earlier costume design. These pentimenti – changes made during the painting process – suggest a shift in tonal mood took place during the painting process, as Whistler replaced the darker and more vivid clothing with the whites and greys of the final White Note.

He also adjusted the background, lowering the treeline by painting over the original green with a pale, warm grey applied with a palette knife (fig.17). In the foreground the X-radiograph and transmitted infrared image reveal both scraping back and overpainting with a palette knife, leaving little discernible trace of his earlier design. A structure – possibly a building – may underly the field above (see fig.16), indicating Whistler may have simplified and flattened the landscape and lowered the treeline. The washy brown paint in the lower left, which covers Whistler’s signature, appears to be a late addition, covering part of the dress. In the sky there are glimpses of bright reds and purples, made with red earth, cobalt blue and red lake visible in cross-section, perhaps depicting a sunset and later overpainted with a thin, dark grey (fig.18).27

A White Note is considered the result of a few weeks’ work in 1862, but the fluidity of these final paint passages is more comparable to the consistency of paint the artist used from the mid-1860s, suggesting a later reworking.28 Whistler talked disparagingly in 1885 of the public’s ‘unlimited admiration’ for a ‘very foolish sunset’, and it is possible he toned down the sky in A White Note in line with this thinking.29 Whistler was known to return to his paintings in response to damage or otherwise, revising Symphony in White, No. 1 and painting over the signature and date in Symphony in White, No. 2.30 The early history of A White Note is incomplete, but it may have stayed with Whistler for some time before it appeared in his neighbour Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s estate sale in 1882.31 It is therefore possible he revisited the painting once more with an exhibition in mind or before it changed hands.32 This sequence of changes to A White Note reveals a tension between the illusion of spontaneity that he sought in this sketch and his working process in paint.

Variations on paper

The handling of paint in A White Note has striking parallels in Whistler’s drawings and prints from the same period. His earliest known print of Hiffernan, simply entitled Jo 1861 (G87; New York Public Library; fig.19) is perhaps the most intimate and unfiltered rendering of the sitter. In the print, an unworked space of the eyes sharpens Hiffernan’s frontal gaze, while in the painting the exposed grey ground of her eye similarly substitutes for painted detail, producing a sense of presence through omission. The two works also share an entangled handling of form. In Jo, fine overlapping lines merge Hiffernan’s hair, skin and clothing with the shadowed background, leaving figure and ground partially unresolved. Similarly, in A White Note, wet-in-wet passages, exposed ground and loose contours blur distinctions between sitter and surroundings. In both, incompleteness becomes an expressive means: the figure emerges through fragments of line, ground and shadow rather than fully modelled form.

In the same year Whistler produced two additional drypoints, Jo’s Bent Head 1861 (G88; Asian Art Museum - Smithsonian Institution, Washington) and The Open Book 1861 (G89; The Hunterian, University of Glasgow), both full-length renderings of Hiffernan in which the figure is only partially described.33 In Jo’s Bent Head, a few sweeping lines establish the silhouette and hem of her dress, while repeated strokes and plate tone – the thin film of ink left on the plate rather than wiped away – supply shadow and atmosphere around her head in profile. In The Open Book, areas of reserve and loosely printed lines similarly suggest the volume and airy fullness of her dress while her gaze is similarly obscured. This abbreviated handling parallels the exposed ground and thinly worked passages of A White Note, where the sitter’s form emerges through what Whistler leaves unpainted as much as through applied pigment. As in Symphony in White, the sitter’s gaze becomes secondary to the material presence of dress and body: her silhouette is at once accessible and elusive, defined through fragments of line, reserve and ink. The drypoints nevertheless reveal a distinct economy from the painting, achieving complexity and spatial depth through the accumulation – or deliberate withholding – of lines and plate tone rather than through layered paint.

In his drawings and drypoints from 1863, such as Sleeping Woman (M310; National Gallery of Art, Washington; fig.20) and The Sleeper (M309; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown), Whistler explores a darker counterpoint to A White Note. Dense charcoal strokes, scratched lines and plate tone envelop Hiffernan’s figure, alternately obscuring and revealing her form, while lighter passages isolate the face, shoulder and hand.34 This interplay creates a rhythm comparable to the scumbled highlights and exposed canvas weave in A White Note. Unresolved contours and shifting charcoal and plate tone suggest a searching process akin to the layers of brushwork beneath the painting’s surface. Yet where Whistler ultimately suppressed the possible sunset in A White Note, these works embrace shadow as an expressive material, using accumulation and reserve to construct depth and atmosphere.

In 1862 Whistler produced four wood-engraved illustrations for the literary magazine Once a Week.35 The commission, arranged by the London engraver Edward Dalziel, was an opportunity for Whistler to reimagine Hiffernan’s likeness across distinct editorial contexts.36 Among them, The Relief Fund in Lancashire (M305; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; fig.21), for which Hiffernan served as the model, translates the industrial crisis of the Lancashire Cotton Famine into an image of solitary endurance: she kneels beside a motionless spinning wheel, her inclined head, limp arm and heavy drapery conveying exhaustion and arrested labour. Dense, unsettled lines in the surrounding atmosphere heighten this sense of suspension, making the environment an active participant in the figure’s psychological presence.

A similar attention to the expressive potential of Hiffernan’s surroundings emerges in A White Note, where technical examination reveals Whistler repeatedly revising both the landscape and the figure. He lowered the treeline, covered traces of buildings and overpainted what may have been a sunset with thin dark-grey paint, progressively simplifying and darkening the landscape. He also revised Hiffernan’s pose, twisting her torso towards the viewer and raising her right arm, while closing in the background around her. These changes recalibrated the psychological register of the figure, shifting her from a relatively withdrawn stance towards a greater sense of engagement with the viewer. Rather than serving as a neutral setting, the environment becomes a mutable field through which Whistler modulates Hiffernan’s presence – an effect achieved in the engraving through dense linear accumulation and in the painting through subtraction, concealment and revision.

In The Nun in ‘Count Burckhardt’, also illustrated for Once a Week, Whistler turned to a darker, gothic subject. The engraving accompanied a poetic ballad signed ‘E.L.’ that recounts the downfall of the Count, who ignores warnings against entering an enchanted wood and is seduced by a supernatural woman. His fiancée, Clara, mourns his disappearance and ultimately becomes a nun who prays for his soul. In his illustration, Whistler isolates her in full-length profile view, her pale face emerging from beneath a dark veil, translating the ballad’s opposition between Burckhardt’s surrender to desire and Clara’s penitential devotion, a contrast that the poem crystallises in its closing lines, where ‘earth’s delights and the joyance high / Of love and beauty’ give way to prayer for his soul. The engraved figure’s inclined head and folded hands recall Hiffernan’s withdrawn posture in A White Note, suggesting how Whistler adapted a recurring vocabulary of gesture to convey different forms of psychological and emotional intensity.37

In 1865 the creative exchange of Whistler illustrating Swinburne’s ‘Count Burckhardt’ was reversed when the poet was inspired to write ‘Before the Mirror’, a poetic response to Symphony in White, No. 2 (then The Little White Girl), which was inscribed on gold paper and attached to the painting’s frame at the Royal Academy exhibition that year.38 The poem interprets the painting as a psychological study of a woman confronting her own mortality and likely increased public debate over the painting’s meaning. However, the musical titles Whistler later applied to the three paintings helped to draw the viewer away from narrative interpretation and towards an appreciation of the abstract, formal qualities of his work.

In A White Note, the pose and composition ultimately resolve into lyrical reverie and atmospheric openness, while in Whistler’s illustrations the female figures modelled after Hiffernan often convey enclosure, constraint or psychological withdrawal. Seen collectively, the illustrations demonstrate how Whistler repeatedly reconfigured Hiffernan’s recognisable features, forming them into a malleable visual type that could be adapted according to different artistic and narrative contexts while maintaining an emphasis on psychological nuance and mood. In these illustrations, Hiffernan remains largely interiorised – absorbed, emblematic, morally or psychologically self-contained – even when placed within narrative or political contexts. In his paintings, however, Whistler gradually brings her outwards, first into the domestic threshold of A White Note, poised between interior retreat and the modern landscape beyond, and then into the cultivated interior and public exhibition space of Symphony in White, No. 2. As Whistler and Hiffernan’s relationship, initially one of private companionship, became increasingly visible to a public audience, her pictorial presence likewise moved from the private sheet and sketch to the exhibited canvas.

Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl

Symphony in White, No. 2 depicts Hiffernan standing before the fireplace in the drawing room of Whistler’s residence at 7 Lindsey Row, Chelsea (now 101 Cheyne Walk), London. She leans her left arm along the mantelpiece, and her face is reflected in the mirror above it. As with A White Note, there are no surviving preparatory sketches that closely relate to the composition. This is the case too for other portraits of Hiffernan carried out in Lindsey Row in the early 1860s, in contrast to his commissioned works.39 Whistler painted Symphony in White, No. 2 on a pre-primed, medium to coarse plain-weave canvas purchased from the artists’ supplier Winsor & Newton.40 The priming is white and applied in two layers, both containing lead white, chalk and oil.41

As with A White Note, Whistler first used a washy brown paint to sketch the composition: it is visible on the right tacking margin, where some red also indicates the beginnings of flowers (fig.22).42 In Hiffernan’s skirt, cross-sections and surface examination using a microscope show that Whistler left a reserve and painted directly onto the white ground, adding to the luminosity of the fabric. Initial modelling of the dress in pure lead white and light blue (analogous to that seen in A White Note) contributes to a coolness of tone. Elsewhere we see a more complex system of employing underlayers than in A White Note. Whistler used opaque colours to locally underpaint elements and set the tone for final surface effects. Under the iron-grey fireplace interior there is a deep reddish-brown layer, which includes umber and iron oxides. The dark green wall is underpainted in a light greenish grey made from a complex mixture of pigments: traces of bone black, natural yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, cobalt blue and a non-fluorescent red lake are all worked into the white base. As with the grey ground in A White Note, this light underpainting extends beneath the faces, forming their mid-tones, with a stronger surface presence in the reflected eyes (fig.23). It also shines through the dark green wall, giving a lively, subtly modulated finish. For the thin dark green layer, Whistler used a similar range of pigments to those found in the underpaint, although in very different proportions.

A wide variety of textures seen across the entire surface indicates the range of brushes used, with the vigorous and varied brushwork recalling elements of Symphony in White, No. 1. The paint is applied fairly thickly in the dress, fan and flowers, but in comparison to A White Note it appears medium-rich and clearly flowed easily, suggesting the addition of thinners or diluents. This could indicate that a medium modifier, such as a megilp, was added to some of the lead white mixtures found in the dress.43 Megilps were made from mixtures of drying oil and resin, here most likely to be a copal resin, a hard resin which gives a glossy sheen to the paint. Such modifications allowed Whistler to blend long, vertical strokes wet-in-wet and aided his brush in making the swirling ribbon strokes seen in the ruffles of the sleeves (fig.24). For these he used square, 12-millimetre brushes.44 Much smaller, pointed sable brushes were used to apply dabs of pink paint over the white dress at the neckline and in the sleeves to create the illusion of flesh seen through translucent, filmy fabric. Unlike in A White Note, there is no evidence that Whistler applied paint with a palette knife, although it was doubtless a tool for removal when he wished to make changes. The increased fluidity of the paint is a development from the works of the early 1860s and one that becomes further pronounced in Symphony in White, No. 3.

Whistler has used a wider range of pigments and painterly techniques in Symphony in White, No. 2, compared to A White Note. This is perhaps unsurprising, since it was intended as an exhibition painting and so demanded a greater level of detail and finish than a sketch. Contemporary accounts speak of Whistler’s meticulous care in preparing his mixtures on the palette before beginning to paint, as he had been taught by the Swiss artist Charles Gleyre (1806–1874), under whom he had studied in Paris in the mid-1850s.45 The process of application was slow as he considered each brushstroke, although his aim was to achieve a ‘spontaneous’ finish.46 The businessman and art patron Lucas Ionides (1837–1924), having sat for his portrait in 1860, recalled that ‘[Whistler] would compose his colour on the palette, put on some touch, then stand off and re-compose his colour’.47

As in A White Note, Whistler achieves an appearance of spontaneity in the painting of Hiffernan’s face. Varying mixtures of paint, sometimes of semi-blended colours, are applied in single strokes with unfaltering precision. For pale flesh tones, Whistler blended red ochre with lead white. Hiffernan’s lips are painted with vermilion, a bright red pigment which is absent from the darker tones of the red iron oxides used for their reflection. The blue cast of Hiffernan’s eyes is achieved with a traditional turbid medium effect, seen too in other Whistler portraits of these years.48 This is an optical effect where light, semi-opaque tones are applied over the darker, warm brown underpainting of the eyes to render them a cool bluish grey. This is how they would have appeared reflecting the natural light entering from the unseen windows at the right. Actual blue paint is only barely evident, blended into her eyelid and with a stronger cobalt blue vein painted at her temple (fig.25). In A White Note, touches of cobalt blue, red earth and yellow are visible to the naked eye, in the brushstrokes in the flesh tones of the face and in the ruffles of the dress. Whistler refined this technique in Symphony in White, No. 2 by incorporating these pure primary colours throughout the dress, blending them directly into the wet surface in the finishing stages (fig.26).49

Almost every hue – even white – is composed with varying amounts of black, red, blue and yellow, woven throughout the work. Whistler developed this principle further in the colour harmonies of his 1870s portraits, for example in Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander 1872–3 (YMSM 128; Tate N04622) where we see the repetition of colours threaded through the entire design, although his palette simultaneously becomes more limited.50

Whistler has used his full palette in Symphony in White, No. 2 to create its rich and varied colour scheme, similar to his East Asian subjects of the same period.51 Cobalt blue is used in the fan, and in the vase decorated with lange lijzen – elongated, stylised female figures – a type also seen in Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks 1864 (YMSM 047; Philadelphia Museum of Art).52 It also tones the deep brown shadow cast by the vase, while the intensely-coloured red lacquer tea bowl is painted in a bright vermilion.53 Hiffernan’s chestnut hair was relatively thinly painted and as in A White Note includes a wide range of red, yellow and brown iron oxides and umber, as well as lead white and possible azurite (copper carbonate) to make a mixed purple. The flowers are painted in a wide variety of colours applied to paint that was still wet. Whistler uses rose madder (identified clearly in ultraviolet light) both in the flowers themselves and in the blue of the vase to describe their reflection in the glossy porcelain.54 Red ochres are mixed with cobalt blue to create purple shades, and Mars yellow, umber and ultramarine have also been identified. The green leaves include cadmium yellow and viridian. At the right edge, Whistler partially scraped down some of the flowers before applying the final leaves and stalks, giving an impressionistic finish to the foliage.

As in A White Note, there is evidence here of Whistler’s struggle to resolve his composition, with several changes made early in the painting’s evolution. The X-radiograph shows that Whistler partially scraped down an earlier placement of Hiffernan’s left arm, which was originally bent, and hand (fig.27a). The X-radiograph and transmitted infrared image also shows that the mantelpiece was originally painted lower down, where the bottom of the marble lintel is now. Her elbow was previously positioned on this mantelpiece, with her forearm and hand, with fingers open, resting across her body, just above her waist (figs.27 and 28). Her right hand did not initially hold the fan as it does now. Another object, just below her hand, is rendered visible in the X-radiograph, with an arc of thick dots indicating its bottom edge – perhaps a different style of fan, suspended from her arm. This has been removed. Two deep, crossed lines are visible in the X-radiograph and in raking light, indicating the paint has been scraped down to the priming in a seemingly impetuous crossing out, forceful enough to create a depression in the surface (fig.27b). This necessitated Whistler’s repainting of the area, including the back of the right hand, which was thickly reworked.

The angle of Hiffernan’s head is not consistent with her painted reflection. This was made clear when the authors visited the room in which Whistler painted the portrait and staged a reconstruction using its original fireplace. Hiffernan was first painted in profile and then must have changed her pose, turning her head in towards the mirror to allow Whistler to paint her full face in the reflection (fig.28). The X-radiograph and transmitted infrared image (figs.27a and 29) show that after painting her reflection in the mirror, Whistler went back to her profile, to adjust the position of her head to be a fraction more upright. These technical images also indicate other changes were made. More of Hiffernan’s hair was originally visible and some objects, possibly vases, rest on the earlier mantlepiece. Colours visible through open cracks in the marble lintel (fig.30) suggest that one of these might be another blue and white china pot. An opaque red overpainted layer extends under many parts of the marble fireplace surround, perhaps to block out this earlier design.

The flowers were integral to the design and painted at all stages. Some were scraped down and overpainted; these are now more visible through the marble fireplace owing to an increase in transparency of the upper layers of paint, a natural consequence of the ageing of oil paint. The X-radiograph suggests the flowers initially extended across the inner fireplace before being partially removed with a palette knife and overpainted. In the dress, too, flowers were scraped away and replaced by the Japanese fan – one of the last elements to be added onto dry paint. Noticeable drying cracks in the fireplace and marble surround suggest multiple paint layers, but with less paint scraped down before subsequent paint applications. These, along with evidence of drying cracks in A White Note, express Whistler’s laboured manipulations of the paint.

Conclusion

As a personal sketch painted on location, A White Note can be seen as a transitional piece between Whistler’s graphic experimentation and the aesthetic ambitions of Symphony in White, No. 2, situated in his carefully curated interior and intended for a wider audience. Whistler’s graphic practice was not ancillary to his painting but foundational. Through repeated experimentation in print and illustration, he learned how to detach Hiffernan’s likeness from private biography and redeploy her as a flexible pictorial motif. Painting consolidated this process, transforming a figure who once resided primarily in the intimate realm of paper into one capable of occupying a domestic and ultimately public aesthetic space, mirroring the more public nature of their relationship.

The spontaneous and fresh paint application in A White Note achieves Whistler’s desire for an au premier coup – painted in a single sitting – finish. However, the numerous revisions to the composition, as well as possible later adjustments, show the labour behind the sketch. That same, sometimes fractious experimentation with composition is seen under the surface of Symphony in White, No. 2, along with the artist’s continued careful use of underlying layers, which contribute to the final effect. Close comparison of the paintings shows Whistler’s development of his technical skills over the early 1860s towards a unified aesthetic vision and demonstrable lack of explicit storytelling. A White Note provides early evidence of Whistler establishing a colour harmony, and this becomes a more elaborate interplay and repetition of colour in Symphony in White, No. 2. Whistler uses a broad palette in both paintings, often in complex mixtures, and extends his range in the latter work, a painting that reflects a more considered exploration of form, colour and tone, influenced by East Asian aesthetics. He positions a reflective Hiffernan surrounded by carefully placed colour notes in the flowers, the red pot, blue vase and Japanese fan to achieve a unity of design. In Symphony in White No. 2 Whistler’s use of thinner, more fluid paint and colour harmony foretells his rejection of Courbet’s realism in 1867, when he wrote to Fantin-Latour: ‘Courbet! and his influence was odious! the regret I feel and the rage, hate even, I feel for all that now would astonish you.’55 Whistler’s further dilution of his paint led him to use thinner layers, which more easily accommodated changes in composition through repeated rubbing back to the canvas weave. This in turn allowed him to paint ‘in one wet’, as Walter Sickert later put it, helping him achieve harmony across the whole paint surface.56 The renamed Symphonies and A White Note therefore anticipate Whistler’s new direction, with Hiffernan’s presence anchoring a sustained investigation into mood, harmony and modern poetic painting.