Meisjesfiguur in kimono Jeanne Freeken

Meisjesfiguur in kimono Jeanne Freeken — Girl Figure in Kimono, Jeanne Freeken — painted around 1901, shows the same model who appears in Witsen's nude study wearing a Japanese kimono, a prop that was enormously fashionable in European artistic circles at the turn of the century. Japonisme — the Western enthusiasm for Japanese aesthetics — had been transforming European art and design since the 1860s, and the kimono was a particularly potent object within this enthusiasm. Witsen's use of the kimono is more understated than many Japoniste works, the garment lending color and pattern without making the image primarily about cultural fantasy.

The kimono's pattern and color is treated with the same observational approach Witsen brings to all costume and textile. The contrast between the kimono's decorative surface and the model's direct gaze prevents the work from becoming purely an exercise in pattern painting, maintaining the integrity of the portrait relationship.