Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Black: Portrait of Theodore Duret

James McNeill Whistler titled this full-length portrait of the critic and collector Theodore Duret an ‘arrangement,’ subordinating the sitter to the play of colour and line. Painted in 1883, it exemplifies the aestheticist doctrine Whistler championed — that a portrait could be valued primarily as a composition. The work entered the Met through the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection in 1913.