Harmony in Coral and Blue: Miss Finch

Whistler's 'Harmony in Coral and Blue: Miss Finch' (1885) is one of his two portraits of the same sitter — the Finch family providing subjects for paintings with different tonal harmonic schemes. The coral and blue harmony creates a warm-cool contrast that operates within the same unified tonal approach as all his titled harmony portraits. Miss Finch as sitter was presumably a member of Whistler's social circle in London, providing the opportunity for multiple portrait sessions from which he could develop different harmonic investigations.

The coral and blue harmony organizes the portrait's entire color structure around the warm-cool relationship between these two tonal colors. Whistler's handling subordinates the portrait's descriptive function to its harmonic purpose — the sitter's dress, complexion, and setting all contributing to the named color scheme rather than being rendered for their own descriptive accuracy. His delicate, thin paint application creates surfaces of extraordinary luminous subtlety.