The Balcony, Variations in Flesh Colour and Green

Whistler regarded painting as simply an exercise in colour variations - to the point where he gave his compositions titles that evoke only the dominant colour notes. Whistler originally dated The Balcony 1865, before replacing the traditional signature with a rectangular cartouche featuring a butterfly (a kind of naturalistic stylisation of his own initials), the cartouche idea being very obviously borrowed from those used by Japanese printmakers. Whistler was in fact one of the earliest enthusiasts of Japanese art.

In The Balcony, Whistler turned the view from his balcony overlooking the River Thames into a sort of Japanese fairy tale by placing several young women dressed in Japanese costume in poses directly inspired by those found in the prints of Utagawa Kunisada and Katsushika Hokusai, almost contemporary Japanese artists whose works were the first to reach the West.