Description

On 20 March 1872 Whistler was commissioned to design 'two figures, one of Neath, the Egyptian Goddess of the Spindle, and the other of a Japanese art worker' for arched niches in South Kensington Museum. 1 A year later he described progress on a 'Gold Girl' and what may have been the same or another design, 'the Japanese painter of the Sun', telling A. S. Cole,

'the Japanese painter of the Sun shall be of my most superb ... It will take me one day and a half to finish perfectly the small Gold Girl ... how swell to have ... my Symphony in Gold at the Kensington Museum.' 2