PURPLE AND ROSE: THE LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS.
J. M. Whistler, 1864.
I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently to see James McNeill Whistler’s 1864 work “Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks”
The painting depicts Whistler’s model (and of course, partner) Joanna Hiffernan in a classic Whistler composition, here given an oriental setting in the sitting-room of his studio. The details in the picture display some of Whistler’s personal collection and reveal his burgeoning interest in East Asian art.
Being no expert on the artistic merits of the painting itself, I thought I would concentrate instead on the terminology of its title, littérateur that I might be.
And as Wildean that I am, I was drawn immediately to the reference to “Six Marks” because the expression The Six-Mark Tea-Pot is the caption to a well-known cartoon satirizing the aesthetic movement, and I was anxious to decipher its coupling with the “Lange Leizen” of the low-country.
The marks of the tea-pot seem clear. They are simply the familiar identification marks impressed usually upon the underside of pottery. In this case they attest to the tea-pot’s authenticity as a worthy aesthetic artifact, which is presumably why the intense bride is turning the consummate thing upside down.
But why six marks?
The answer to this would have had been clear if you had attended a lecture on oriental porcelain given by W. Chaffers, Esq, on February 12, 1867.
In case you missed it, Chaffers explained about the symbols on the base:
They usually consist of six marks, the two first express the dynasty, the two next the period, and the two last signify “made during,” like our expression fecit.1
Whistler knew all this, of course, but not even he was deft enough to convey the six marks meaningfully on the base of a vase in the painting.
So he had to put the Chinese characters somewhere else.
And knowing that Whistler also designed the frame, I located them in six incised roundels at the corners and vertical midpoints of the inner frieze.
Main Building. Photo: John Cooper.
As to our second piece of decoding, you might discern in the picture the decorations on the vase that is being painted—and a visual clue is also provided by the reclining artist herself—the languid posture of the slender woman.
Correspondingly, Lange Leizen is the Dutch term for “Long Ladies,” and is the name given to blue-and-white Chinese porcelain decorated with such figures. You may also see reference to “Lange Lijzen”, a Delft variant meaning “long Elizas,” applied to the same classification of Chinese ceramics.
© John Cooper, 2024.
With credit to the recommended archive at the University of Glasgow:
The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler: A Catalogue Raisonné.
Footnote:
- Lecture “On Pottery and Porcelain.” By W. Chaffers, Esq,. Lecture IV. – Monday, Feb. 12., 1867. Reported in the Journal of the Society of Arts, (London : The Society of Arts, Vol. XV), 193. ↩︎
Has anyone else noticed the six marks on the frame? That’s brilliant. (I always assumed the heading “six-mark tea-pot” was a reference to its price, with “mark” being like the German Mark—much as “shilling” was used in both the UK and Austria—though I’d never come across that usage of “mark” before.)
Compare “hallmarks”, of course. And yes, the Philadelphia Museum of Art usefully identifies the decorated frame.
See the Whistler raisonné link for (much) more, including the frame.
Fantastic detective work–as usual!
“In case you missed it” I did rather, but only by 105 years.