Painted fashion. (Current and Coming).(James McNeil Whistler; painting; Frick Collection, New York, New York)

In 1864 when James McNeil Whistler exhibited the languorous painting illustrated at right at the Royal Academy in London, a critic remarked: "The picture is among the finest pieces of colour in the Exhibition--see the beautiful harmonies of the woman's robes." By this time Whistler had been collecting Japanese and Chinese objects for more than a year, among them the embroidered Chinese robe worn over a black Japanese kimono depicted in the painting. The kimono reappeared in other works, most often worn by the sitter, but in his famous portrait of his mother, it hangs on the wall.

Whistler's fascination with women's fashion is the subject of a tightly focused exhibition on view at the Frick Collection in New York City through July 13. Entided Whistler, Women, and Fashion, it includes eight oil portraits of women and sixty-three other works: prints, drawings, pastel studies, watercolors, costume designs, fashion plates, and costumes. It is the first exhibition to examine this topic and provides fascinating insi ghts into this central aspect of Whistler's aesthetic. The show concentrates on the years between the mid-1860s and 1900.

The exhibition commences with the 1864 portrait of Whistler's mistress Joanna Hiffernan in a work entitled Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl. In it she poses in a white muslin gown that recalls the diaphanous, classically inspired dresses depicted in paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists. In 1874 Whistler completed Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Mrs Frederick R. Leyland, (illustrated above) in which the sitter is shown wearing a tea gown designed by the artist in an interior also of his making. In concert with the principles of the aesthetic movement, the dress and the interior combine to create a total work of art. The tea gown was at the height of fashion at this time, but it was only worn at home. Therefore painting her in this intimate garment was a particularly audacious move. There are numerous surviving sketches for this painting, most of which make clear (because they are faceless) that Whistler spent a great deal of time working out the pose and the dress. A portrait of about ...