Symphony In White
courtesy of the
National Gallery of Art.
History
has its missing persons, those people about whom we know a little but
not enough. We know their names and what they did, but then they
drifted off, as if their names, like the poet’s, were writ on
water. We might look up these names only to find their years of birth
and death shadowed by the word circa or,
worse yet,
superseded by a question mark. Their fame or notoriety was brief, and
soon passed, and so we are left to wonder, “What ever
happened to...?” and we have no answer.
We
try to learn more, but the trail grows cold, like footprints on a
mountain track, slowly filling in with snow until they’re gone
for good. But some missing persons demand more of us, and so our
imagination leads us by the hand farther down their paths. Here is
one of those missing persons whose end was most poignant.....
.....
At the National Gallery in Washington DC, we stand before the
painting by James McNeil Whistler, Symphony in White
No. 1,
The White Girl. It’s a large canvas, the full-length figure
is life-size, and it’s hung so that we look up at her. Today,
just as when she was first displayed at the Salon des Refusées
in 1863, she makes a stunning impression. The only bright color is
her long auburn hair, all the more striking for the paleness of her
complexion. Most of the rest of the canvas is a spectrum of white,
gray and beige. Her features are all in ideal proportion, and her
large eyes demand our attention, and we can well imagine her
dominating any room where she might have appeared in person, just as
she dominates her space in this gallery today.
The
White Girl’s origin and end may be obscure, but if we take a
little trouble, we may know her name, Joanna Hiffernan, and that she
came from Ireland, and that she lived in London, where she met
Whistler around 1860. She was more than the artist’s model and
lover, she also helped manage his business as an artist. Whistler
painted more than one lover in his lifetime but Joanna was the first
and, I like to believe, his favorite. By various contemporary
accounts, she had a charming, vivacious manner, even charismatic, and
she also had some ability as an artist. They were a very attached
couple, and he painted her more than once. They lived together for
six years in London and Paris, where he painted this most famous
portrait in 1862. During these years together Joanna met other
painters in the Paris art world; indeed, she met one too many.
One
of Whistler’s close friends was Gustav Courbet, already a
controversial figure, both for his art and his way of life. While
Whistler was away for several months in 1866, (a time in which he
left Joanna a power of attorney to manage the sale of his art, a sign
of his complete trust in her), she kept company with his friend
Courbet, who took advantage of the opportunity to paint Joanna in a
very different kind of portrait, a painting which was shown privately
— but not publicly — for many years, but we may see it
today in the Musée d’Orsay.
Courbet
was the paradigm Bohemian artist of mid-century Paris, only happy
when he shocked, and this painting does not disappoint. Unlike other
portraits which center on the face, Courbet painted not the face but
a closeup female nude, from thighs to torso. The focal point of the
canvas also gives the painting its name, L’Origine
d’Universe. What did Courbet mean by this title?
Clearly he intended this as a bon mot, a
shared
laugh among his male friends, but it strikes us today as a cheap
jape, the worst kind of bad boy’s limp wit. No woman would ever
make this joke.
Courbet
painted L’Origine for
the Turkish
ambassador, Khalil Bey, a man of louche reputation and no Koranic
inhibition; (he later sold the painting to pay his gambling debts.)
In the same year, Joanna posed in another Courbet painting, Le
Sommeil, in which Joanna appears as one of two nude
women in
a Sapphic embrace. By appearing in these paintings — both
Whistler’s and Courbet’s — Joanna became what we
would call today a celebrity, and in the Paris art world she became
known as la belle Irelandaise, which
was in fact the
title of another Courbet portrait of Joanna, one which focused on her
face, and this portrait Courbet never sold.
But
when Whistler returned to Paris and learned of these events, his
friendship with Courbet ended, and his relationship with Joanna was
never the same. For reasons we can well imagine, he and Joanna could
not continue in the same way. Seeing the nude L’Origine portrait,
Whistler saw what he had no doubt seen before, but now painted by
another hand. And then, seeing the painting of Joanna asleep in the
arms of another woman, he may have seen something he had never even
imagined. They broke off, and eventually they both left Paris, but
not together.
And
yet they were not done with each other, as we know from a few stray
scraps of facts and the odd rumor, for Joanna was, apparently,
someone people couldn’t forget. People who knew her remembered
her, and asked about her, and several people’s letters refer to
her and confirm sightings, or simply pass on rumors. And starting
with these few gleanings, we readily imagine more than these surface
facts...
.....
We know that some years after these paintings, Joanna was in the role
of stepmother to a young boy, Charles Whistler Hanson, a son Whistler
had with another woman, which, I believe, suggests that whatever had
driven them apart had not completely severed the bonds of their
friendship. There was still this much attachment, enough so that he
trusted her to raise his son, and she was willing to do it. Joanna
and the boy lived together for some years in a cottage in a London
suburb. How close were Whistler and Joanna in these years? We really
cannot know, but it’s easy to believe they still shared the
same friendship, which, as Seneca tells us, outlasts love.
.....
By another account of these later years, Joanna set up an antique
shop in Aix-en-Provence, and there were rumors that she may have sold
some of Courbet’s paintings. And during this time she may have
married a man named Abbot. If true, was this a late-life love,
perhaps a true friendship, the kind of relationship that might have
given her some security. We don’t know but we can hope it was
so. For, as the world knows, at the other end of life, we all need a
safe harbor.
.....
And then in 1903, Whistler passed away, and from this event we know
two facts: he named Joanna in his will, and she came to his funeral
in London. How much did the artist leave her? We don’t know,
but we can hope it was a comfortable sufficiency. As for the funeral,
we know from the account of one of his many friends that la
belle Irelandaise appeared by the grave all in black
mourning dress, that at one point she lifted her veil, revealing the
still thick auburn hair, now streaked with gray. Another of the
artist’s friends at the funeral wrote, “I noticed she was
richly dressed and I felt that the world had gone well for her.”
Let’s hope he was right. What were her thoughts that day?
Now near sixty, did she think back to the time when she and Whistler
were both young, when they needed no nourishment but the sight and
touch of each other? Did she wonder, why did I put all that at hazard
for the brief time with Courbet, a fellow so shallow and so cruel? I
like to think she had some regret on this point, but I hope she
regretted nothing more.
.....
And then she disappeared, went missing. We have no date or
place
of death, no account of her funeral, no will or any other record,
which strikes me as strange that someone so well known could simply
vanish from the public eye, and this only a hundred years ago. It’s
very likely her life held no more drama, perhaps her last days and
death were untroubled, perhaps she died with her hand held by someone
who loved her and whom she loved in return. Perhaps in her last years
she saw Whistler’s son, the childhood attachment kept alive
over the years. We can imagine all this and even more.
She
was someone who gave herself to others, indeed, gave so much that we
still have what she left behind, the paintings mentioned here and
others too. And though she may be a missing person in one sense, for
we have no record of her end, she is far from missing in the sense
that matters most. In these paintings, she lives forever.
Contact
Giles
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