1. Glazer, Jacobson, McCarthy, Roeder, wall label, 2019:
Whistler's domestic interiors often convey a sense of intimacy or capture a private moment. An early work in this vein is Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room; (1860–61), an oil painting of his half-sister (playing a hidden piano), his niece, and a family friend. Twenty years later he returned to the theme in his watercolors.
He frequently depicted his model and longtime companion Maud Franklin, recognizable by her auburn hair, in quiet moments at home. Several compositions contain suggestions of an unseen person – perhaps the artist himself – by including a hat on the bed or an empty chair.
2. Susan Hobbs, 1978
Whistler often juxtaposed dark, closely related tones in his oil paintings. He was interested in the decorative patterns created by such subtle relationships rather than in the story suggested by the subject matter. In this example, the artist seems to be applying the aesthetic expressed in his large canvases to the watercolor medium.
1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 196
Art and music are pointedly conflated in this interior scene. Whistler placed a young woman at the piano, her hands on the keyboard, her music spread in front of her. Above the figure, a small painting has been hung. An empty chair sits next to the musician–it is the artist's. As we must imagine Whistler's presence, we must conjure up the tune played by his mistress. For the musician, bravura connotes brilliant technique or style. Whistler has kept pace with bravura brush work.
2. Morning Post, May 24, 1884
"'Bravura,' a subtle arrangement of colours in warm brown and grey. –Messrs. Dowdeswell's Gallery."
3. Frederic Wedmore, "Mr. Whistler's Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Gray." Academy, May 24, 1884
"The spirit and fire of the 'Bravura in Brown'–an 'accident of alliteration,' Mr. Whistler, but how serviceable, is it not? –are not for a moment to be gainsaid."
4. "Philistine," "Mr. Whistler and His Artifices," The Artist Journal of Home Culture, July 1, 1884
"In looking at the figure subjects one gets caught in a dilemma; the faces are often very expressive, but being small must be examined at a distance of a very few feet. At this range, the rest of the picture, painted in a slashing, dashing style, is an unintelligible, amorphous mass. When you retire some yards the picture shapes itself: it may be compared to one of those pictures drawn for children to use with a distorting mirror, which, to the naked eye, seems shapeless, but when seen in the mirror look all right: distance in our case acting as the mirror. At the distance required for general effect you cannot see what the face is like: so you must sacrifice face for general effect, or vice versa. 'Bravura in Brown' and 'Red and Black' [no. 61] shew this strongly."
5. "Art Notes," Liverpool Mercury, July 3, 1884
"After the Scherzo in Blue' [no. 31], it seems natural to come across 'Variations in Violet' [no. 30] in the form of a clever flower study and 'Bravura in Brown' in water colour."
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