James McNeill Whistler Flesh Colour and Silver: The Card Players

Date c.1898
Materials Oil on wood
Dimensions 12.6 cm x 21.2 cm
Marks None
Further information GLAHA 46348.
Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1980 (496, plate 320).

Note This picture is unfinished and yet is important because it tells us something of Whistler's working method. Notice that the figures have been first sketched in with black crayon and then thin oil paint has been washed over it. The paint has been used to fill in the figures and details of the background, such as the sofa and curtain. Look how the face of the left hand figure remains undefined. However, Whistler still managed to give a sense of character to the seated girls. Look at the way in which the girl on the right tucks her foot behind her leg. The models for this painting were Eva and Gladys Carrington, sisters who regularly sat for Whistler. This painting is related to Whistler’s pastels of young naked girls, and may be a symbolic work about beauty and fate, card playing being related to ideas about chance.