National Museum of Asian Art
Two figures
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1858
As he traveled, armed with a pencil and a sketchpad, Whistler was often intrigued by the brief encounters between strangers that he observed along the way. This rapidity drawn image recalls a passage in Flaubert's The Sentimental Education. Abroad a river steamer, the artist-hero "noticed a gentleman exchanging flirtatious remarks with a peasant girl" in the midst of an anonymouse crowd of passengers and sailors.
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