Variations in Blue and Green

This oil sketch is part of a group of similar works later collectively titled the Six Projects by Charles Lang Freer. It dates from a period when Whistler undertook a self-imposed process of artistic reeducation. By borrowing freely from Japanese prints, classical Greek sculpture, and French eighteenth-century rococo painting, Whistler hoped to liberate his art from the chains of narrative realism. His use of chromatic and musical titles suggests that the decorative interplay of colors, rather than a particular story or moral, is key to the work’s content. Whistler later explained that they were the result of the “profound analysis on which the Japanese produce their extraordinary colour-harmonies,” woven through a composition, he said, like threads in embroidery.