Like the titles of all of the Whistler paintings in the Frick’s collection, this title alludes to music and points to Whistler’s emphasis on the formal qualities of painting: paintings as arrangements of line and color and shape. In this painting, Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frederick Leyland, the “flesh color” may give pause to some twenty-first-century viewers: this obviously refers to her flesh color, which, like that of virtually all wealthy patrons of art in Britain until well into the twentieth century, is the light skin of European descent.
The wife of the Liverpool shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, Frances was a close friend of Whistler’s. In fact, he made this painting as an homage to her. The artist created an aesthetic environment for the sitter, designing her dress—a loose-fitting “tea gown” drawn from Japanese, French, and classical elements—and the interior of the room as an ensemble. This is Whistler’s salon in his Chelsea house. The tilting-up of the floor and plum blossoms jutting in from the left reflect his fascination with Japanese prints, as does his butterfly monogram, which appears in the painting and on the frame, designed also by him.
Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland
Frances Dawson (1834–1910) married in 1855 Frederick R. Leyland, a major Liverpool shipowner, telephone magnate, and art collector, who was one of Whistler’s chief patrons before the two quarreled bitterly over the decoration of the famous Peacock Room, once the dining room of the Leylands’ London townhouse and now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.
Commissioned in the fall of 1871, this portrait was exhibited at Whistler’s first one-man exhibition in 1874 (an event sponsored by Leyland), but was never considered by the artist to be totally finished. Within its predominantly pink color scheme, intended to set off Mrs. Leyland’s red hair, the subject is depicted wearing a multi-layered gown designed by the artist. The abstract, basketweave patterns of the matting at the base are repeated on the frame, also designed by the artist; they offset the naturalistic flowering almond branches at the left, which suggest Whistler’s deep interest in Japanese art at this time. Like the portrait of Montesquiou, that of Mrs. Leyland is signed at mid-right with Whistler’s emblematic butterfly, a pattern based on his initials JMW and imbued with the formalistic preoccupations of the nineteenth-century aesthetic movement. The portrait is in fact so totally a work of exquisite design that Whistler’s contemporary Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of it, with some reason: “I cannot see that it is at all a likeness.”
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Frederick R. Leyland, London. Mrs. Leyland. Her daughter, Mrs. Val Prinsep. Alice B. Creelman. Frick, 1917.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
