James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Symphony in White: the Girl in the Muslin Dress (around 1870), a work that, until recently, had languished in a storeroom for decades at the Singer Museum in Laren, the Netherlands, after its authenticity was called into question, has been restored thanks to support from the Tefaf Museum Restoration Fund. A recent technical study showed it to be a work by Whistler, and scholars now believe that it is one of 50 rolled-up canvases that vanished after the artist went bankrupt as a result of his expensive and sensational slander lawsuit against John Ruskin. The work had undergone at least three previous treatments. The recent €22,000, year-long restoration focused on removing aged varnish and overpainting.
