Little White Girl (1864). Oil on canvas. 77 x 51. Symphony in White, No. 2, also known as The Little White Girl is a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The work shows a woman in three-quarter figure standing by a fireplace with a mirror over it. She is holding a fan in her hand, and wearing a white dress. The model is Joanna Hiffernan, the artist's mistress. Though the painting was originally called The Little White Girl, Whistler later started calling it Symphony in White, No. 2. By referring to his work in such abstract terms, he intended to emphasize his art for art's sake philosophy. In this painting, Heffernan wears a ring on her ring finger, even though the two were not married. By this religious imagery, Whistler emphasizes the aesthetic philosophy behind his work. Whistler created the painting in the winter of 1864, and it was displayed at the Royal Academy the next year. The original frame carried a poem written by Whistler's friend Algernon Charles Swinburne; titled Before the Mirror; written on sheets of golden paper. The poem was inspired by the painting, and to Whistler this demonstrated that the visual arts need not be subservient to literature. Though there are few clues to the meaning and symbolism of the painting, critics have found allusions to the work of Ingres, as well as oriental elements typical of the popular Japonisme. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in the United States in 1834, the son of George Washington Whistler, a railway engineer. In 1843, his father relocated the family to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where James received training in painting. After a stay in England, he returned to America to attend the US Military Academy at West Point in 1851. In 1855, he made his way back to Europe, determined to dedicate himself to painting. He settled in Paris at first, but in 1859 moved to London, where he would spend most of the remainder of his life. There he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who would have a profound influence on Whistler. It was also in London that Whistler met Joanna Hiffernan, the model who would become his lover. Their relationship has been referred to as a marriage without benefit of clergy. By 1861, Whistler had already used her as a model for other paintings. In Wapping, painted between 1860 and 1864, Hiffernan portrayed a prostitute. The direct precursor of The Little White Girl was a painting created in the winter of 1861-62, initially called The White Girl and later renamed Symphony in White, No. 1. Hiffernan supposedly had a strong influence over Whistler; his brother-in-law Francis Seymour Haden refused a dinner invitation in the winter of 1863-64 due to her dominant presence in the household. Whistler painted The Little White Girl in 1864, with Hiffernan as his model. In 1865 it was exhibited at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy; Whistler had offered The White Girl for the 1862 exhibition, but it had been rejected. English critics were not too impressed by the painting; one in particular called it bizarre, while another called it generally grimy grey. In 1900, however, it was one of the pictures Whistler submitted to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, where he won a grand prix for paintings. The first owner of the painting was the wallpaper manufacturer John Gerald Potter, a friend and patron of Whistler. In 1893 it came into the possession of Arthur Studd, who gave it to the National Gallery in 1919. In 1951 it was transferred to the Tate Gallery. In 1862 Whistler had met the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, with whom he developed a close friendship. The relationship between the two was mutually beneficial. Inspired by Whistler's Little White Girl, Swinburne wrote a poem with the title Before the Mirror. Before the painting went on exhibition at the Royal Academy, Whistler pasted the poem written on gold leaf onto the frame. The idea of decorating a painting's frame with a poem was one Whistler had gotten from Rossetti, who had similarly pasted a golden paper with one of his poems on the frame of his 1849 painting The Girlhood of Mary. To Whistler, this poem underlined his idea of the autonomous nature of the painted medium. It showed that painters were more than mere illustrators, and that visual art could be an inspiration for poetry, not just the other way around. A misconception circulated at the time that the painting had been inspired by Swinburne's poem. In a letter to a newspaper, Whistler refuted this, while still showing his respect for Swinburne's work; those lines he wrote were only written, in my studio, after the picture was painted. And the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter-a noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one.