James Abbott McNeill Whistler

An unidentified young girl stands before a chair with her arms clasped behind her back, looking out as if in recognition that her body is on display for viewers. With no context or excuse for her nudity, no bathtub or dressing table, there is an immediacy to her presence that exposes the potential awkwardness of the professional

and financial contract between artist and model. Like his contemporaries among the French Impressionists, James McNeill Whistler often found his models among

the lower ranks of society, touring the working-class quarters of London and hiring teenage and pre-pubescent girls to pose in his studio. His delicate drawing style transformed these unidealized and dirty subjects, such as this obviously untrained young model, into objects of beauty.