Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl

James McNeill Whistler painted his mistress Joanna Hiffernan standing on a bearskin rug in 1862. She wears white against a white curtain, holding a white lily. The near-monochrome palette was radical.

The painting was rejected by the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon, but it became a sensation at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, where it hung near Manet's Olympia. Critics called it "The White Girl" and debated whether it represented innocence or fallen virtue.

Whistler later retitled it Symphony in White to emphasize that subject matter was secondary to tonal harmony. It now hangs at the National Gallery of Art.