Japanese Woman Painting a Fan (recto) (c. 1872): Art, History and Details

Japanese Woman Painting a Fan (recto) (c. 1872) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In 1872 Whistler was commissioned to contribute two designs to complete the decorative scheme of 35 monumental portrait mosaics installed in the south court of the South Kensington Museum in London (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). A celebration of the arts, the mosaics represented male artists throughout history; Whistler’s two designs attempted to correct the gender imbalance. His subjects were a woman at a spindle and a Japanese woman painting a fan. Here, a brush is poised in the figure’s right hand—notice the sharp diagonal line above the orange butterfly—as she pauses to contemplate the fan she is painting. The commission went unfulfilled, and all that survives is this pastel study.

Object facts

• Title: Japanese Woman Painting a Fan (recto)
• Date: c. 1872
• Creator attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk and pastel
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.9 x 17.6 cm (11 x 6 15/16 in.); Secondary Support: 38.5 x 28.9 cm (15 3/16 x 11 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1933.222.a

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Henry A. Everett for the Dorothy Burnham Everett Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Contractor, Tara. “Gold Thread.” Apollo 203, n. 752 (May 2026): 76-83.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.