I’m here in the London studio posing for my son because his chosen model hasn’t arrived. I have to admit that she’s beautiful when the sun pours in through those new leaded-glass windows and the light refracts into rainbows drifting across her cheeks. The sparkle on that Irish red hair must encourage his plans to see her more of her when I’m not around. And the muslin? Such a dull fabric! No wonder the Royal Academy refused to show his first painting of her.

radiant skin attracts 

a touch of lust 
heat on the artist’s pallet 

white is so unreliable 
muslin makes for scandal 
worthy women wear silk 

He called the first one Woman in White, but then all the talk about Wilkie Collins’ novel with the same title confused people. Well, my son—he’s inventive like his father—renamed the painting Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl with some nonsense he made up about paintings capturing the essence of existence as well as music does. Imagine a model singing the lead in an opera!

review and renew 

add intrigue 
a note of propriety 

shameful 
a ruse at best 
fodder for art patrons 

But today he’s stuck with his mother. I’m certain he’ll paint her again, still dressed in muslin and white like the bride she’ll never be. I’m facing the wall because he arranged me in profile and I’m supposedly wearing gray and black relieved only by dabs of white lace on my bonnet and wrists. I wonder what he’ll title this one? And why anyone would pay to see a portrait of Whistler’s mother. The White “Girl” indeed! It always takes his paint a long time to dry.

Publisher’s Note:

Images above are reproductions of oil-on-canvas paintings by American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). The first, Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl (1862), is held by The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Image was downloaded from Wikipedia on 14 December 2024.

The second painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), known colloquially as Whistler’s Mother, is held by Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Image above was downloaded from Wikipedia on 14 December 2024.

Margaret Koger

was raised on an acreage near the Snake River and later moved to Boise, where she taught English and Composition in the Boise Schools and at Boise State University. She is a Lascaux Prize finalist and her works have appeared in numerous publications, including Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Limberlost Review, and the Writers in the Attic Anthologies Animal (2015), Game (2017), and Apple (2020). She is the author of two collections of poetry: What These Hands Remember (Kelsay Books, 2022) and If Seasons Were Kingdoms (Fernwood Press, 2024).