Description: young woman with red hair, loose robe, head down, serious expression with red fan in her proper left hand
Label Text: From the 1870s until his death in 1903, James McNeill Whistler focused mainly on painting portraits. In Girl with a Fan, Whistler calls upon his characteristic loosely-painted (painterly) style to depict a young woman holding a red fan in her left hand. The subject of the portrait is an unknown young woman, wearing a loose-fitting brown dress over a white blouse. The painting is made up mainly of tones, such as browns and off-whites, which allow the red of the fan and the subject’s face and hair to pop. This focus on a single color or range of colors in a particular painting is a hallmark of Whistler’s pictures, as found in his most renowned works such as Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (otherwise known as “Whistler’s Mother”).
Tags: women; portraits; costume Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+EL+1.2016 |