Green and Blue: The Dancer
James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
c. 1893
- Medium
- Watercolor and opaque watercolor over traces of black chalk on brown wove paper laid down on card
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 27.5 × 18.3 cm (10 7/8 × 7 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by Dr. William D. Shorey; through prior acquisitions of the Charles Deering Collection and through prior bequest of Mrs. Gordon Palmer
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Inspired by Greek sculpture and Japanese prints, James McNeill Whistler became entranced with portraying the female form clad in diaphanous drapery in the 1890s. He developed this theme in all the media in which he worked, including transfer lithography, oil, pastel, and watercolor. The artist usually provided garments for his models to wear, often classical gossamer gowns with high waists and crossed bodices paired with brightly colored kerchiefs. His models needed a certain degree of strength and agility, as he sometimes asked them to dance about his studio until he found a suitable pose. In Green and Blue: The Dancer, Whistler employed thin watercolor washes to distill the graceful movements of his lissome young model. The brown paper on which he painted lends opacity to the washes, thereby adding subtle weight to the thin veils of fabric draping the figure.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
