The photograph of the portrait of Miss Alexander is as suggestive of
the colour as a pianoforte arrangement of _Tristan_ is of the
orchestration. The sounds of the different instruments come through
the thin tinkle of the piano just as the colour of the blond hair, the
delicate passages of green-grey and green, come through the black and
white of the photograph. Truly a beautiful thing! But "Before the
Mirror" reflects perhaps a deeper beauty. The influence of that
strange man, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is sufficiently plain in this
picture. He who could execute hardly at all in paint, and whose verse
is Italian, though the author wrote and spoke no language but English,
foisted the character of his genius upon all the poetry and painting
of his generation. It is as present in this picture as it is in
Swinburne's first volume of Poems and Ballads. Mr. Whistler took the
type of woman and the sentiment of the picture from Rossetti; he saw
that even in painting Rossetti had something to say, and, lest an
artistic thought should be lost to the world through inadequate
expression, he painted this picture. He did not go on painting
pictures in the Rossetti sentiment, because he thought he had
exhausted Rossetti in one picture. In this he was possibly mistaken,
but the large, white, indolent shoulders, misshapen, almost grotesque
in original Rossettis, are here in beautiful prime and plenitude; the
line of the head and neck, the hair falling over the stooped shoulder
--a sensuous dream it is; all her body's beauty, to borrow a phrase
from Rossetti, is in that white dress; and the beauty of the arm in
its full white sleeve lies along the white chimney-piece, the fingers
languidly open: two fallen over the edge, two touching the blue vase.
Note how beautiful is the placing of this figure in the picture; how
the golden head shines, high up in the right-hand corner, and the
white dress and white-sleeved arms fill the picture with an exquisite
music of proportion. The dress cuts against the black grate, and the
angle of black is the very happiest; it is brightened with pink sprays
of azaleas, and they seem to whisper the very enchanted bloom of their
life into the picture. Never did Dutch or Japanese artist paint
flowers like these. And the fluent music of the painting seems only to
enforce the languor and reverie which this canvas exhales: the languor
of white dress and gold hair; languor and golden reverie float in the
mirror like a sunset in placid waters. The profile in full light is
thrilled with grief of present hours; the full face half lost in
shadow, far away--a ghost of a dead self--is dreaming with half-closed
eyes, unmindful of what may be. By her mirror, gowned in white as if
for dreams, she watches life flowing past her, and she knows of no use
to make of it.