The Woman in White

This article offers a critique of the catalogue for the exhibition in London and Washington, Whistler and the Woman in White. The first strand examines Whistler’s white paintings of the 1860s, setting out a counter trajectory of this visual thematic, past and present, to include self-portraits of women artists so attired, artworks from J-L David to contemporary black women artists like Lorna Simpson or Lorraine O’Grady who have completely reinvented this figure. Whistler’s white paintings are situated in perspectives of class, race and nation in the turbulent years in which they were made. It provides a snapshot of recent Whistler studies, highlighting new accounts that counter a prevalence for "art for art's sake" approaches. The second strand offers a new biography of Joanna Hiffernan as an Irish woman living in the diaspora, discussing her activities, her dress and her potential dress-making for the white paintings, her modelling for Whistler, her circulation in artistic circles, the places where she lived, her closeness to her sister Agnes, her surviving letters, assembled from the fugitive traces of her life and experience that have survived.