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Symphony in Green and Violet
Maker(s)
Artist: James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903)
Historical period(s)
Oil on millboard mounted on wood panel
H x W: 61.9 x 45.8 cm (24 3/8 x 18 1/16 in)
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
F1903.176a-b
On View Location
Currently not on view
Classification(s)
United States, woman
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased from James McNeill Whistler in July 1903 [3]
Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [2]
[1] See Original Whistler List, Paintings, pg. 8, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.
[2] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.
Previous Owner(s)
James McNeill Whistler (C.L. Freer source) 1834 - 1903
Charles Lang Freer 1854 - 1919
This oil sketch is part of a group of similar works later collectively titled the Six Projects by Charles Lang Freer. It dates from a period when Whistler undertook a self-imposed process of artistic reeducation. By borrowing freely from Japanese prints, classical Greek sculpture, and French eighteenth-century rococo painting, Whistler hoped to liberate his art from the chains of narrative realism. His use of chromatic and musical titles suggests that the decorative interplay of colors, rather than a particular story or moral, is key to the work's content. Whistler later explained that they were the result of the "profound analysis on which the Japanese produce their extraordinary colour-harmonies," woven through a composition, he said, like threads in embroidery.
Judith Elaine Gorder. James McNeill Whistler: A Study of the Oil Paintings 1855-1869. Ann Arbor. fig. 61.
Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer. The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler. Studies in British Art 2 vols. New Haven, 1980. pl. 47.
Grace Dunham Guest. Whistler: The Artist and the Man. Smithsonian Institution Radio Program, vol. 10, no. 3 New York. p. 13.
David Park Curry. James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art. Washington and New York, 1984. pp. 21, 45, 110, pl. 12.
Ernest Francisco Fenollosa. The Collection of Mr. Charles L. Freer. vol. 1, no. 2 Detroit, November 1907. pp. 57-66.
Bernhard Sickert. Whistler. London and New York. cat. 33, p. 154.
Elisabeth Luther Cary. The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study., First edition. New York, 1907. cat. 22, p. 158.
Thomas Lawton Linda Merrill. Freer: a legacy of art. Washington and New York, 1993. p. 188, fig. 126.
Collection Area(s)
Copyright with museum
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