James McNeill Whistler
- Zofia Choromańska
- Dec 13, 2022
- 2 min read
The artwork of american painter who spent most of his artistic career in France - "Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl" breathes calm and harmony of colors. Looking at it we get an impression as if the time has stopped in place. The scene has personal, almost intimate character, the girl is looking at the ring on her hand and her pensive face is reflected by the mirror. It’s difficult not to notice the Japanese motives, although not as straightforward as in other artworks of the artist, it shows the fascination of James Whistler in Japanese culture. James McNeil who was one of the most controversial figures in Paris during that time.
James McNeil Whistler was born in Lovell in Massachusetts in 1834. He started his serious artistic training in 1855 in Paris. He gets to know many well known artists, travels a lot as well. He often experiences criticism for his artworks and fails to explain his artistic method to the wider public. Finally in his older years, he was called a master and widely appreciated both in Europe and America. As he said later on „there will be no talk of failures, the past will be forgotten”.
The artwork we already mentioned - Symphony in white no. 2 was painted when artist was 30 years old and was accepted enthusiastically by the Parisian public. The goal of the artist was to ( just like in music) achieve the sense of harmony of colors and make an impression of a song. That resulted in the almost mystical character of the artwork. The elements harmonize with each other in order to form the reflective nature of the painting.
„At The Piano” is a title of the debut painting of the artist. The painting wasn’t accepted by the Parisian lounge due to it’s „excessive originality”. The panting was therefore presented by François Bonvin at his Parisian atelier. The complementary colors, grayish green and the red of the carpet are combined with the contrasting colors of black to white. On the painting we see two people, Debora - the sister of painter and her daughter. Debora’s dress is a black mass with almost no variation and is harmonized on the other side by the white dress of her daughter. Both woman and girl, due to their placement on the canvas(according to the rule of thirds, their faces are placed on the upper thirds of the painting) and very static, almost flat composition of the painting, seem distant to each other. The viewer can place a number of horizontal composition lines all across the painting which accelerates it’s stability. Desaturated color palette and the placement of the color on floor and walls (again, according to the rule of thirds but this time horizontally, the red, green and white-green color fil the horizontal thirds of the painting) also add to the calm, static and melancholic nature of the painting.
That shows us that painter was deeply aware of the compositional and color rules and used them to create original and unique paintings of calm and harmonic nature.
Sources:
"Wielcy malarze" nr. 12, artykuły autorstwa: Dork Zabunyan
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