Existing comment:
"Vert et Or: La Raconteur (Green and Gold: The Storyteller)" ca 1896-1900, by James McNeill Whistler.
Freer once wrote a friend, "I believe Whistler really was the most successful of all known painters of children." Most of Whistler's young subjects were the children of friends or relatives. But in the later 1890's, Whistler often took cab rides through poorer London neighborhoods looking for street children to paint. The subject of this painting was an Italian waif named Tom. The sweep of the boy's left hand and his crooked smile suggest a mischievous intelligence. |