Whistler: Japanese Style

James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
United States, 1864-1870; additions 1870-1879
Oil on wood panel
H x W: 61.4 x 48.8 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1892.23a-b

A pivotal work in Whistler's oeuvre, The Balcony stands between the fanciful costume pictures such as Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Gold Screen (F1904.75) and the more fully synthesized approach to Japanese art evident in the Nocturnes of the 1870s (F1909.127, F1902.97). Here, the bright, flatly painted foreground and oriental props suggest a world far from modern-day London. But the kimono-clad models—and the viewer—can also look across the river to the factories of Battersea.

Whistler's purpose was not to criticize or even to document the industrial landscape, but rather to transform it: the smokestacks are veiled in atmospheric mist, and the adjacent slag heap (a well-known monument of industrial waste) evokes images of Mount Fuji by the Japanese artist Hokusai.

James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
United States, 1863-1865
Oil on canvas
H x W: 199.9 x 116.1 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1903.91a-b

This painting, which hangs in the Peacock Room, was part of a series of costume pictures undertaken by Whistler in mid-1860s in which western models appear in Asian dress, surrounded by Chinese and Japanese objects from Whistler's own collections of porcelain, lacquer, fans, and painted screens. Whistler's creative borrowing of Asian objects and influences was a way to suggest the temporal and spatial distance of a purely imaginary realm. Here, the noted Victorian beauty, Christina Spartalli, strikes a pose that recalls both the elongated figures depicted on Chinese Kangxi porcelain and the graceful courtesans that appear in ukiyo-e prints.

The Princesse was purchased by the shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, who hung it in his dining room, where he also displayed his extensive collection of Kangxi porcelain. Whistler suggested some changes to the color scheme of the room which would, he told Leyland, better harmonize with the palette of the Princesse. The result was Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, which Whistler completed in 1877.

Later, in 1903, Charles Lang Freer purchased the Princesse and, the following year, acquired the entire Peacock Room, where Whistler's Princesse has presided over a changing array of Asian ceramics ever since.

James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
United States, 1864
Oil on wood panel
H x W: 50.1 x 68.5 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1904.75a

In this costume picture from the mid-1860s, Whistler's model and mistress, Joanna Hiffernan, poses as a courtesan—or connoisseur—absorbed in the study of a Japanese print by Hiroshige. Japanese prints were still relatively unknown in London, and a bewildered British art critic described it in 1865 as "a picture, drawing, fan or whatever it may be."

It was precisely this apparent strangeness that attracted Whistler to Japanese art. By borrowing its motifs and stylistic elements, he liberated his art from the narrative and moralistic demands of typical Victorian painting. The frame was designed by Whistler to extend the decorative, japonesque surface of the painting. It is decorated with roundels of palm and ivy leaves reminiscent of Japanese family crests.

When Charles Freer, who already had amassed fine collection of Japanese screens, first saw this painting in 1902, he thought it "one of the most perfect things in composition and colouring in the whole range of Mr. Whistler's art."