Note in Red, The Siesta

The painting portrays Englishwoman Maud (Mary) Franklin, Whistler’s model and mistress between the mid-1870s and 1888, lying on a red divan, a studio prop that appears in other works of the early 1880s. Quickly and sketchily executed in a nervous series of long brushstrokes, Maud’s recumbent form, enclosed within a voluptuous swathe of dress fabric and upholstery, suggests an unposed moment, a siesta for the weary model, whose voluminous skirt trails carelessly along the floor as she rests with her face turned from the viewer. The setting is unspecified, as if the painting is deliberately unfinished; above the back edge of the sofa, the stylized butterfly, Whistler’s idiosyncratic “signature,” asserts the reality of the flat panel surface on which the artist has pictured the scene. Maud, who called herself Mrs. Whistler, was the last in a series of women who were both Whistler’s models and his mistresses; he abruptly ended their more than decade-long affair in 1888 to marry Beatrice Birnie Philip Godwin. Maud posed for innumerable paintings, drawings, and prints, but Whistler never individualized her features or allowed her name to appear in the titles of oil paintings he exhibited. As the impersonal title of this painting suggests, Whistler did not paint Maud so much as the decorative effect she occasioned, an approach consistent with his pursuit of an art defined by the harmonious arrangement of color and form rather than the illusionistic representation of subject matter. We wish you all a lazy Saturday evening. And if you prefer more intense pieces of art don't forget to look on yesterday's John Martin :]