1872
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Japanese Woman Painting a Fan (recto); Standing Woman Holding Up Her Dress (verso) is a 1872 by James McNeill Whistler, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a woman in a long kimono, brush poised over a paper fan, while the other side shows a second woman lifting her skirt. Whistler loved Japanese prints and borrowed their flat colors and simple lines. The butterfly signature under her hand is his quiet joke—tiny, but hard to miss. If you like this light touch, look up *sfumato*.
After being expelled from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Whistler made his way to Europe, where he pursued the life of the artist-bohemian, first in Paris, and then in London. Whistler was a pioneer in appreciating the effects of Japanese prints, and his art is characterized by an Asian subtlety and delicacy. Whistler signed his work with a monogram representing a butterfly, which appears just below the hand of the model in this drawing.
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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