Portraits, Pastels, Prints: Whistler in The Frick Collection 
June 2 through August 23, 2009

	James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland, 1871–74, oil on canvas, The Frick Collection

Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink:
Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland

For the wife of his chief patron of the 1870s, Whistler created an Aesthetic masterpiece in which subject and setting form one harmonious visual field. The gossamer fabrics of Frances Leyland’s gown, which Whistler himself designed, seem to dissolve into a formless passage of paint at the bottom of the picture. Flouting the rules of one-point perspective, Whistler paints the checkered rug and parquet floor with squares that lie flat against the picture plane, rather than receding into space. As a result, they correspond with the incised basket-weave pattern of the frame, which Whistler also designed. The picture is a perfect synthesis of subject, costume, setting, and frame.

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