1872
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Japanese Woman Painting a Fan (recto) is a 1872 by James McNeill Whistler, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a kimono sits on the floor, brush in hand, painting a fan. Soft light falls on her face and the paper spread before her. Whistler made this to fix a problem: a London museum’s wall of famous artists showed only men. His two designs—this one and a woman spinning thread—were meant to add women to the story. The fan she paints feels almost alive, as if you could pick it up. To see how light shapes quiet moments like this, look up *chiaroscuro*.
In 1872 Whistler was commissioned to contribute two designs to complete the decorative scheme of 35 monumental portrait mosaics installed in the south court of the South Kensington Museum in London (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). A celebration of the arts, the mosaics represented male artists throughout history; Whistler’s two designs attempted to correct the gender imbalance. His subjects were a woman at a spindle and a Japanese woman painting a fan. Here, a brush is poised in the figure’s right hand—notice the sharp diagonal line above the orange butterfly—as she pauses to contemplate…
Read the full account in the museum source.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom.
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