James McNeil Whistler’s Little Rose of Lyme Regis (1895) is my favorite painting at the MFA in Boston. Usually, I go to see it after looking at the Copleys and Sargents in the American Wing. It makes the intimacy of this painting alluring and charming by contrast. In a frame by Whistler, Little Rose sits farther away than her defiant demeanor already demands, the frame, a kind of projection of the distance at which she prefers both Whistler and us, to remain.

This is one of the few paintings by Whistler that has no precursor in its title, such as the famous painting of his mother, titled Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, or Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket. The last painting, below, was the subject of a famous lawsuit by Whistler against John Ruskin, the preeminent art critic of the time, who had accused Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler sued for libel, and won. And yet more interesting than the accusation of libel was Whistler's argument for an experiential interpretation of art along the lines of the Aesthetic Movement, which favored "art for art's sake."

Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket (ca. 1875)

Another way of saying this is that the emotional power of a painting came from the experience of the painting itself, and not necessarily from its subject. Hence, the two-part title, with the former describing the paint itself (Grey and Black) and the latter noting the subject. This would become de rigueur by the mid-20th century, once the subject had been removed altogether.

Whistler, as a tonalist, worked with highly reduced color palettes, thin layers of glaze, deepening tones within the painting so that only the memorable is seen clearly. All else is inferred. Look, for instance, at Rose's hands tightly gripped at the bottom of the painting. We imagine her elbows tightly gathered, as if trying to fit into the narrow frame. And yet, as we look closely, it is merely our imagination, as her arms lie in an immeasurable field of black.

Perhaps this painting might have been titled, Study in Black: Little Rose.