Focus on this artwork and discuss the Composition and interpretation.
Symphony in White, No. 3 shows Heffernan reclining on a sofa with her head rested on her hand, while Jones is seated on the floor, leaning against the sofa. There is a fan on the floor, and a plant bearing white flowers on the right. The fan is an oriental element, and an expression of the artistic trend known as Japonisme which was then prevalent in European art. At the time, Whistler was greatly influenced by his friend and colleague Albert Joseph Moore. The painting bears close resemblances to Moore's roughly contemporary painting A Musician, though at the time the two were working so closely together that it is hard to ascertain exactly who influenced whom.The painter Walter Sickert – a student of Whistler – later described the painting in unflattering terms. In December 1908, five years after Whistler's death, he wrote in the Fortnightly Review:In 'Symphony in White, No. 3,' we get the culbute. A bad picture, lâchons le mot, badly composed, badly drawn, badly painted, the low-water mark of the old manner, before the birth of the new. Folds of drapery are expressed by ribbons of paint in the direction of the folds themselves, with hard edges to them. Only painters can quite understand the depth of technical infamy confessed in this last description. It means that the drapery is no longer painted, but intended.
To Whistler himself, however, the painting was not old-fashioned, but rather an expression of something new and innovative. By naming it Symphony in White, No. 3, Whistler highlighted his emphasis on composition, rather than subject matter. The use of a musical title was also an expression of the theory of corresponding arts, which was an idea developed by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. These tendencies became more and more dominant in Whistler's art over time. His two earlier paintings Symphony in White, No. 1 and Symphony in White, No. 2 had originally been titled The White Girl and The Little White Girl respectively, and later been renamed by the artist. Whistler had originally intended to call this work Two Little White Girls, but the development of his artistic philosophy made him change his mind, and from the time of its first exhibition it has been called by its musical title.
A Musician Albert Joseph Moore Japonisme Walter Sickert Charles Baudelaire Symphony in White, No. 1 Fortnightly Review Symphony in White, No. 2