The Japanese influence--the most potent of all in Whistler’s art--began to show itself gradually and did not come out entirely in the open until such pictures as the “Lange Leizen,” “The Gold Screen,” “The Balcony,” and the “Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” appeared. With them not only the flat pattern but Tokio porcelains, fans, screens, robes were shown. There was some incongruity in the appearances, which Whistler did not seek to conceal. The figure in the “Lange Leizen” is English, sits on a chair like an English model, and is in an English interior; but Japanese costume and blue-and-white pots and jars are introduced. Whistler regarded it as a color scheme and called it “An Arrangement in Purple and Rose,” but his audience saw only the incongruity. “The Balcony” again was mystifying. There were four figures in Japanese robes on an iron-railed platform with an outlook on the Thames. There were bamboo screens and potted azaleas and blue-and-white tea things. Again there was the impossible--Japan set down in London. The subtitle, “A Harmony in Flesh Color and Green,” explained nothing. The picture was judged by its meaning, not by its appearance, and, of course, it meant nothing in an English sense. The “Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” was even more startling. Every one knew it was a young Greek girl who posed as the Princesse, and the masquerade of Japanese robe and rug and screen and fan was only a pretense. The subtitle of “Rose and Silver” again did not enlighten. What was wanted was the common sense of it and not the harmony or the arrangement. But it had no common sense; it was merely a fantasy in color. Persistently they looked for the wrong thing and would not see what the painter wished them to see. It was just so with “The Little White Girl”--a beautiful symphony in white showing a young girl in muslin leaning against a white mantel with her face reflected in a mirror. It was Japanese only in the fan, the flowers, and the vase, but the arrangement was too flat for public appreciation, and the girl was declared the “most bizarre of bipeds.” [Illustration: “The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine,” by James A. McNeill Whistler. In the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution.]