In the context of this artwork, analyze the Symphony in White no 1 of the Works in the exhibition.

In 1861, after returning to Paris for a time, James Abbott McNeill Whistler painted his first famous work, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. This portrait of his mistress and business manager Joanna Hiffernan was created as a simple study in white; however, others saw it differently. The critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary thought the painting an allegory of a new bride's lost innocence. Others linked it to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, a popular novel of the time, or various other literary sources. In England, some considered it a painting in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. In the painting, Hiffernan holds a lily in her left hand and stands upon a wolf skin rug (interpreted by some to represent masculinity and lust) with the wolf's head staring menacingly at the viewer.
Countering criticism by traditionalists, Whistler's supporters insisted that the painting was "an apparition with a spiritual content" and that it epitomized his theory that art should be concerned essentially with the arrangement of colors in harmony, not with a literal portrayal of the natural world.Whistler started working on The White Girl shortly after December 3, 1861, with the intention of submitting it to the prestigious annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. In spite of bouts of illness, he finished the painting by April. The white paint Whistler used contained lead, and his work on the seven-foot-high canvas had given the artist a dose of lead poisoning. The portrait was refused for exhibition at the conservative Royal Academy in London.  Whistler then submitted the painting to the Paris Salon of 1863, where it was also rejected. The public was able to see the painting exhibited with other rejected works, in the Salon des Refusés.  The Salon des Refusés was an event sanctioned by Emperor Napoleon III, to appease the large number of artists who joined forces to protest the harsh jury decisions in 1863 Of the over 5,000 paintings submitted in 1863, 2,217 were rejected.  
In a letter to George du Maurier in early 1862 Whistler wrote of the painting:... a woman in a beautiful white cambric dress, standing against a window which filters the light through a transparent white muslin curtain – but the figure receives a strong light from the right and therefore the picture, barring the red hair, is one gorgeous mass of brilliant white.
Whistler submitted the painting to the Academy, but according to Joanna Hiffernan, he expected it to be rejected. The previous year, in 1861, another painting had caused a minor scandal. Edwin Henry Landseer's The Shrew Tamed showed a horse with a woman resting on the ground nearby. The model was named as Ann Gilbert, a noted equestrienne of the period, however it was soon rumored that it was actually Catherine Walters, the notorious London courtesan. Whistler's painting was reminiscent enough of Landseer's that the judges were wary of admitting it. White Girl was submitted to the Academy along with three etchings, all three of which were accepted, while the painting was not. Whistler exhibited it at the small Berners Street Gallery in London instead. The next year, Whistler tried to have the painting exhibited at the Salon in Paris – the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts – but it was rejected there as well. Instead, it was accepted at the alternative Salon des Refusés – the "exhibition of rejects" that opened on May 15, two weeks after the official Salon.Although Whistler's painting was widely noticed, he was upstaged by Manet's more shocking painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. The controversy surrounding the paintings was described in Émile Zola's novel L'Œuvre (1886). The reception Whistler's painting received was mostly favourable, however, and largely vindicated him after the rejection he had experienced both in London and in Paris. The painting was greatly admired by his colleagues and friends Manet, the painter Gustave Courbet and the poet Charles Baudelaire. The art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger saw it in the tradition of Goya and Velázquez. There were, however, those who were less favourable; certain French critics saw the English Pre-Raphaelite trend as somewhat eccentric.
Paris Salon annual exhibition Académie des Beaux-Arts Gustave Courbet Edwin Henry Landseer Napoleon III Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl Goya Jules-Antoine Castagnary Charles Baudelaire Joanna Hiffernan courtesan Wilkie Collins L'Œuvre Émile Zola  Salon Paris James Abbott McNeill Whistler Royal Academy Velázquez The Woman in White Catherine Walters George du Maurier Pre-Raphaelite Théophile Thoré-Bürger