SYMPHONY IN WHITE, NO.III

BY JAMES MCNEIL WHISTLER

This half-tone reproduction of Whistler’s painting presents two women sitting together in an interior room. One woman, portrayed by Joanna Heffernan, sits informally on the sofa, leaning the upper half of her body along the length of the sofa to the left, resting on her right arm with her head in her hand. She wears a long white dress, and her dark hair (red in the original painting) is loose. There is a crushed flower with scattered petals on the sofa in front of her upper body. Heffernan stares forward, meeting the viewer’s gaze. Her left arm rests along the back of the sofa in the centre of the image. To the right of the image, the second woman, portrayed by Milly Jones, appears to be falling asleep because her eyes are half closed. Her face is turned toward the left facing Heffernan’s knees. Jones’ left arm is down at her side. Her hair is also loose, and she also wears a long white dress (in the original painting, it is a creamier shade of white than the one Heffernan wears). Jones sits on her right hip with her knees bent so that her legs are curled at the foot of the sofa under the folds of her dress. She lays her head on her right arm, which is stretched along the seat of the sofa, pointing right. Her left arm hangs at her side and beneath it, a fan rests against her leg on the carpeted floor. The sofa is draped in a white sheet. The carpet has a pattern of large white flowers. To the right of Milly, in the foreground, the leaves and flowers from a large plant can be seen. This plant stands taller than the image of Milly, but the base of the plant cannot be seen. Written in the bottom left corner of the painting is “Symphony in White, No. III _ Whistler 1867.” The 7 is written to obscure a 5 written beneath it.

MLA citation:

Whistler, James McNeil. “Symphony in White, No. III.” The Pageant, vol. 1, 1896, p. 41. Pageant Digital Edition, edited by Frederick King and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2019-2021. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2021, https://1890s.ca/pag1-whistler-white/

magazine_images The Pageant 1 Symphony in White, No. III James McNeil Whistler 1896 Oil on canvas Painting Swan Electric Engraving Company

Symphony in White No. III_Whistler 1867

Couch, Carpet, and Fan Human Figure and Female Figure/ Woman 19th century Indoor setting, Interior, Plant, and Flowers