Green and Violet: Mrs. Walter Sickert

Green and Violet depicts Ellen Cobden, wife of Whistler’s onetime pupil Walter Sickert. Using wide and expressive brushstrokes, Whistler painted his sitter in a black and white dress, the texture and color of which contrast with the softened earth tones of her face and hair. Whistler’s wife described the painting as “very pretty . . . It is exactly like her, a funny little fat lady — a very graceful one rather Dutch in character.” Whistler titled many of his portraits with the names of colors, emphasizing their dual nature as both formal studies and likenesses of the sitters. In Green and Violet, the sitter is almost secondary to the overall composition, her mass a counterbalance to the flattened sofa.