Two figures

As he traveled, armed with a pencil and a sketchpad, Whistler was often intrigued by the brief encounters between strangers that he observed along the way. This rapidity drawn image recalls a passage in Flaubert's The Sentimental Education. Abroad a river steamer, the artist-hero "noticed a gentleman exchanging flirtatious remarks with a peasant girl" in the midst of an anonymouse crowd of passengers and sailors.