Spring in Art 5: The Bored Girls of Spring, Part One

James McNeill Whistler, Wapping

Last time, we found de Cherico’s ‘The Double Dream of Spring’ mirroring our empty public spaces. John Ashbery’s collection of the same name showed us how to meet the stillness and displacement of these ghost towns with momentum. 

But what about the people stuck inside? This double-feature goes down a rabbit-hole of images of the mal du siècle, which uncannily echo our own time of disease and isolation; there is a whole sub-genre of spring in art history that we might call Dolce Far Niente – sweet idleness – or we might simply call these paintings The Bored Girls of Spring.

The world shielding itself in varying degrees of quarantine has proved something of an equaliser. Though not quite

Wealth inflects boredom. Ennui for the rich, humdrum for the masses. The world shielding itself in varying degrees of quarantine has proved something of an equaliser. Though not quite. When Ellen Degeneres is bored of self-isolation, she lies upside down on her plush and bountiful sofa – perhaps one from her own home line? – and Facetimes John Legend and Chrissy Tegan. The same scene is being played out across millions of households across the globe. It’s not quite the same, though, is it?

In Zona, Geoff Dyer speculates that ‘one of the novelties of our era is the possibility of instant boredom – like instant coffee – as opposed to a feeling that has to unfold gradually, suffocatingly, over time.’ I love that phrase, instant boredom. It captures the fact that there are different kinds of boredom and that some are more desirable than others.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl

It also describes a culture so rampantly pursuing excitement and distraction from boredom that we usually don’t have time to cultivate it. Instead, we try to shoot it down between meetings or episodes on Netflix. Lockdown has got me craving that more luxurious and novel flavour of boredom. Fortunately, instant boredom exists in art, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s ‘Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl’ (1864) provides that much-needed hit.

A young woman in a white dress leans on a mantelpiece. She props herself up between daydream and reality. At first it might seem like we’re interrupting a moment of deep contemplation. But there are various elements that suggest quite the opposite.

A young woman in a white dress leans on a mantelpiece. She props herself up between daydream and reality

The large mirror hints towards the Narcissus myth – but combined with her dejected look, and since she’s not looking directly into it, the overall impression is more nuanced: the narcissism of solipsism (that self-isolating mindset, in which you might indulge boredom, almost for its own sake.) You’re inclined to find an emotional linchpin in the wedding ring so prominently displayed on her left hand. But then she’s not really looking at that, either.

As far as I can tell, holding up a ruler (and the strict geometrical patterning of right angles in the fireplace, mirror and hanging pictures on the wall seems to invite such anality) she appears to be looking at the lacuna between the mirror and the willow-pattern vase resting on the mantelpiece, perhaps watching dust collect there in real time. Maybe her eyes are glazed over.

Meanwhile, the sightline of her reflection’s sad hooded eyes more accurately tracks to the wedding ring outside the mirror. Although odd, this is not some Dorian-Gray-doppelgänger skylarking; more like social realism with artistic licence. Whistler takes the liberty of tilting the woman’s reflected face so that the viewer can see more of her, to give them Betty-Draper-in-Mad–Men vibes: the woman’s reflection shows what has been repressed to facilitate the holy grail of appearance on the other side of the mirror.

The woman’s reflection is silhouetted against a seascape, which adds to the dreamlike atmosphere. The seascape, like the mirror, is pointedly not being looked at. Then again, it is quite generic – then again, so is ‘Symphony in White No. 2’, in its rehearsal of the lady in white trope.

Whistler takes the liberty of tilting the woman’s reflected face so that the viewer can see more of her, to give them Betty-Draper-in-Mad–Men vibes

The fan held casually in the woman’s right hand, the vase, and the sprinkle of pink azaleas all give a hint of Japonisme. These elements add a bit of colour to the blacks, whites and creams of her life, her vanilla state of mind. (There’s something safe and delicious about this kind of boredom.)

This is where we pick up our spring theme, and on the coattails of Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote the poem ‘Before the Mirror’ upon viewing Whistler’s image: it was written on gold leaf, which the artist pasted onto the frame before the painting went on exhibition at the Royal Academy. This poem yearns for the ‘new loves and treasures / New Years will bear’ from a place where ‘Soft snows […] fill all the flowerless garden’.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl

In other words, ‘Before the Mirror’ is a rehearsal of Swinburne’s ‘A Vision of Spring in Winter’. However, Whistler’s Little White Girl could also be thinking, ‘I am weary of days and hours, / Blown buds of barren flowers, / Desires and dreams and powers, / And everything but sleep’ – lines from ‘The Garden of Proserpine’. Here, taking another (gloriously monotonous?) run at a familiar theme, Swinburne evokes the eponymous goddess who spends half of the year in the underworld, when everything withers and winter comes, and half of the year on earth, bringing with her the blooms and harvests of spring.

While The Little White Girl might be a veritable Proserpine, wishing that the springtime of her life would arrive from the depths of its winter, it’s difficult from a modern perspective not to think that she’s already living in milk and honey – depicted here in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, no less. The model is Whistler’s mistress Jo Hiffernan, who always looks like she’s posing in an advert for Jo Hiffernan. It’s as if Whistler is selling us a lifestyle – most notably as embodied in the luxurious, luminescent gown.

It’s as if Whistler is selling us a lifestyle – most notably as embodied in the luxurious, luminescent gown

Indeed, the dress would have been carefully chosen. While the cambric and muslin worn here were associated with modesty and domesticity, and while the high neckline and long sleeves comply with the conventions of Victorian respectability, the loose hair and the sheer billowing skirt without crinoline (supportive undergarments) would have raised eyebrows.

This subtle subversion of otherwise white, virginal purity draws the woman’s sexual status into question, even as she gazes in the direction of her wedding ring (Whistler and Hiffernan weren’t married; though, having previously posed as a prostitute in ‘Wapping’ (1860-64) and mistress in ‘Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl’ (1861-62) I guess you could say this was a graduation of sorts.)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 3

The other reason, of course, that ‘Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl’ looks like an advert is because of the barrage of luxury women’s lifestyle imagery we see today, in which it’s de rigeur for models to look aloof, blasé or just plain bored. There’s a certain status that comes with boredom; only the affluent have time for it.

But it’s really in the nineteenth century that boredom first becomes accepted as a legitimate artistic subject. Perhaps, since aristocratic women were so often the subjects performing or enduring it, this period fortified ennui’s long-lasting association with opulence.

For now, why not indulge in Whistler’s symphony? This isn’t just ennui; this is luxury, instant ennui

More than an advert, what Jo Hiffernan looks like here is all the other silent Victorian women in white dresses. But why was this theme so frequently depicted? Why do these images of the mal du siècle seem so charged for our own time of disease and idling? Were these women isolated by the mores of the time and locked down by the male gaze?

Next time, we’ll explore these questions, as we meet more of The Bored Girls of Spring. For now, why not indulge in Whistler’s symphony? This isn’t just ennui; this is luxury, instant ennui.