A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

James McNeill Whistler, The White Girl, and the Animal(s) in Question.

Author(s)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.13562

Keywords:

James McNeill Whistler, painting, wolf, sheep, iconography, symbolism

Abstract

James McNeill Whistler’s painting, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, has been the focus of much art historical analysis, but the animal rug beneath the feet of his model has received little attention. In this essay I suggest that Whistler represented a mounted wolf’s head sitting on top of a large sheepskin rug, i.e., a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Exploring the diverse meanings of this symbol within the context of the painting complicates how we understand the work and reinforces its importance as a reflection of the artist’s life and ambitions at the time he created it.

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Author Biography

  • Laura D. Gelfand, Utah State University

    Laura D. Gelfand is Professor of Art History at Utah State University. Her research centres on representations of dogs and wolves in the history of art. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of York in 2018–19, and in addition to editing Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society (Brill, 2016), her recent publications include: “The Wolf at the Door and the Dog at Our Feet”, Home Cultures 18, no. 2 (2021): 105–27, and “Human Animal Interactions in Western Art”, in The Handbook on Human-Animal Interactions, Interventions and Anthrozoology, Routledge (2023): 658–76.

James McNeill Whistler, “The White Girl” (detail)

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Published

2023-10-26

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Laura D. Gelfand (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Gelfand, Laura. 2023. “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: James McNeill Whistler, The White Girl, and the Animal(s) in Question”. Humanimalia 14 (1): 137–174. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.13562.