Focus on Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl and explain the History of the painting and Swinburne's poem.
Whistler painted The Little White Girl in 1864, with Hiffernan as his model. In 1865 it was exhibited at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy; Whistler had offered The White Girl for the 1862 exhibition, but it had been rejected. English critics were not too impressed by the painting; one in particular called it "bizarre", while another called it "generally grimy grey". In 1900, however, it was one of the pictures Whistler submitted to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, where he won a grand prix for paintings. The first owner of the painting was the wallpaper manufacturer John Gerald Potter, a friend and patron of Whistler. In 1893 it came into the possession of Arthur Studd, who gave it to the National Gallery in 1919. In 1951 it was transferred to the Tate Gallery.In 1862 Whistler had met the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, with whom he developed a close friendship. The relationship between the two was mutually beneficial. Inspired by Whistler's Little White Girl, Swinburne wrote a poem with the title "Before the Mirror". Before the painting went on exhibition at the Royal Academy, Whistler pasted the poem written on gold leaf onto the frame. The idea of decorating a painting's frame with a poem was one Whistler had gotten from Rossetti, who had similarly pasted a golden paper with one of his poems on the frame of his 1849 painting The Girlhood of Mary. To Whistler, this poem underlined his idea of the autonomous nature of the painted medium. It showed that painters were more than mere illustrators, and that visual art could be an inspiration for poetry, not just the other way around.A misconception circulated at the time that the painting had been inspired by Swinburne's poem. In a letter to a newspaper, Whistler refuted this, while still showing his respect for Swinburne's work; "those lines" he wrote "were only written, in my studio, after the picture was painted. And the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter – a noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one." Swinburne repaid the compliment: "...whatever merit my song may have, it is not so complete in beauty, in tenderness and significance, in exquisite execution and delicate strength, as Whistler's picture..."
The White Girl Tate Royal Academy Universal Exhibition Tate Gallery Algernon Charles Swinburne John Gerald Potter National Gallery Paris summer exhibition