Hans Holbein the Younger, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7. Royal Collection Trust and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

On Monday I talked about Hans Holbein the Younger’s origins in Augsburg, and his career in Basel, and next week I’m looking forward to talking about his time in England with Holbein II: Realism and Royalty (Monday 27 November at 6pm). It will be an introduction to the Queen’s Gallery exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court, focusing on the master himself, as there is much else on show besides: the exhibition does more than it says on the packet. If you missed the first talk, and can’t make the second, I’ll be delivering an edited version of both as a study evening for ARTscapades on Thursday, 30 November – they record their talks, so you can always catch up later. I’ll be away the following week (in Hamburg with Artemisia), and so there will only be two talks in December, bringing some much-needed colour with the Ashmolean’s spectacular Colour Revolution (11 December), and then the Royal Academy’s promising Impressionists on Paper (18 December). I’m still planning the New Year – so do keep your eye on the diary. And of course, if you have any ideas, including anything you would like me to talk about, do let me know via the contact page.

I’ve recently written about the Whitehall Mural (see 207 – Making a monarch, a mural, and more) and Holbein’s portrait of one of Henry’s potential wives, Christina of Denmark (199 – The One that Got Away), but today I would like to go back to the Mural, and look at the woman who was on the other side from Henry VIII, his third wife, Jane Seymour. This drawing of her is typical of Holbein’s beautifully delicate use of coloured chalk. Many drawings like this survive, and, as we shall see on Monday, they document Holbein’s circle of patronage and the increasing success and status he enjoyed as a portrait painter. However, although they are part of the process of developing a finished portrait, they are not sufficient: they have a great deal of detail in the face, but other elements have only been sketched in. It seems highly likely that there were other drawings – for the hands, and details of the costume, for example, which this image, along with the others, does not provide. This particular drawing seems to have been used more than once: it was lengthened by the addition of an extra strip of paper along the bottom, and lines have been drawn below the join, and just below the neckline of the bodice, implying that there might have been versions of the portrait in different formats.

Holbein knew how to work efficiently. The drawings are all on paper which was prepared with a pink wash before he even started. This meant that he didn’t have to worry about the flesh tones. He would sketch faint outlines in black chalk, and gradually refine and strengthen them. Different elements were shaded in coloured chalks – black, yellow and brown for the headdress and red for the lips in this example. The eyes are picked out with green watercolour. The outlines, once secure, were heightened with pen and ink, which is particularly clear along the outline of the face on our left, and around the tip of the nose, the top of the nostril, and between the lips. He also uses it to define the eyelashes, the space between them and the whites of the eyes telling us the thickness of the eyelids. There are delicate suggestions for the patterning of the headdress, but, as I said above, this is not enough to explain his understanding of the costume in the finished painting.

Not all of the painted versions after Holbein’s drawings which survive are by the master himself, but this one, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is. It is really worthwhile looking at in detail… so we shall.

Jane Seymour wears a typical Tudor headdress known as a gable hood – so called, because its structure is reminiscent of the gables at either end of a pitched roof. The white band which frames the face is decorated with a motif repeated in Seymour’s jewellery. Flowers with four gold petals surrounding a dark gemstone alternate with squares of four equally sized pearls. A striped, golden fabric folds over her high forehead, and a patterned red and gold cloth wraps around the ‘gable’, with a black hood stretching behind and folded over the head.

The alternating flowers and pearls frame the neckline, hemming the bodice and sleeves, and also make up the necklaces. From one of these, effectively a choker, hangs a pendant. A second necklace hangs lower, and is tucked into the bodice. This strikes me as an odd thing to do, as it could be scratchy, but it was common practice: women in several other portraits wear necklaces in the same way. It looks as if the brooch, which is pinned to the front of the bodice, is hanging as a pendant from the longer necklace – even if the red velvet of the bodice is in between them. A pattern of triangles – or diagonal and horizontal lines – is embroidered in gold thread around the hems of the velvet (‘inside’ the flower-and-pearl bands), and in the lining of the oversleeves, which are folded up so that we can see them (they are more visible in one of the details below). Small, individual stitches – again in gold thread – can be seen along the seam to our right of the bodice. The brooch itself is both intricate and delicate. It shows Jane Seymour to be an observant Christian, as it is made up of the first three letters of Jesus’s name in Greek – ‘ihs’ – with the horizontal line which tells us that this is an abbreviation being used to turn the ‘h’ into a cross. This was a formulation devised by St Bernardino of Siena in the 15^th Century. It was used by him as the ‘Name of Jesus’, at which, according to the bible (Philippians 2:10), and the well-known hymn, every knee shall bow. With no little irony, given what had just happened to the church in England, and the way in which the break from Rome would develop, this symbol – the Name of Jesus – would soon be adopted by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), which was founded just three or four years after the portrait of Jane Seymour was painted. As a jewel, though, this brooch could easily have been designed by Hans Holbein himself.

The British Museum has many of Holbein’s designs, including nine for brooches. The one on the right was almost certainly designed for Jane Seymour: it combines the ‘H’ of Henry VIII with the ‘I’ equivalent to the ‘J’ of Jane – as seen in the Whitehall Mural. The letters in the brooch Seymour is wearing are defined by cut stones, whereas those in the drawing are probably meant to be worked in gold, but apart from that, the combination of letters hung with three pearls is remarkably similar.

Seymour also wears rings: there are three on her left hand, one of which looks remarkably like a simple wedding band. She has a belt made of the flower-and-pearl pattern, from which hang chains which vary this motif with the addition of tiny paired chalices decorated with spiralling gold patterning and gold handles. The undersleeves appear to be a richly patterned grey (or silver?) brocade, buttoned to allow the chemise to puff out. The latter has delicate black embroidery on the cuffs. The panel of the underskirt is made from the same grey/silver brocade as the sleeves.

The costume Queen Jane wears in the Whitehall Mural is remarkably similar. The painting was destroyed in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698, but this reduced-size copy by Remigius van Leemput, still in the Royal Collection and included in the current exhibition, was painted in 1667, so we know (roughly) what the original looked like. The cut of the clothes is not identical – the neckline is notably different, for example. Apart from that, the posture is the same, and the structure of the clothes very similar. The fabrics are different, though: the oversleeves are lined in ermine – emphasizing Seymour’s royalty in this dynastic portrait – and the undersleeves and skirt are red velvet. Other details are identical: the three white ‘puffs’ of chemise visible below the sleeve on our right, for example. It seems highly likely that the original drawing, at the top of the post, was used to develop a cartoon for the mural much like that for Henry VIII which survives in the National Portrait Gallery. Here is an edited version to suggest how they might have worked together.

We don’t know why the cartoon for Henry (and his father, Henry VII) survives, but that for the other side of the mural doesn’t. There were many copies of Henry’s portrait, which might explain the cartoon’s survival. However, as mother of the heir to the throne, Jane Seymour was also important, which would explain the different versions of the portrait which were made. Nevertheless, she wasn’t queen for long. The couple married in private on 30 May 1536, and their son, the future Edward VI, was born on 12 October 1537, just over sixteen months later. But within two weeks Jane had died, from complications arising from the birth. Heartbroken, Henry VIII was nevertheless on the hunt for a new wife the following year: the portraits of Christina of Denmark and Anne of Cleves are the result.

Jane Seymour was Queen for little more than 16 months, but it coincided with Holbein’s presence at the Tudor Court, and for that we must be thankful. At least we have a beautiful, delicate drawing and a stunning, intricately executed painting to remember her by.

Frans Hals, Portrait of Catharina Hooft with her Nurse, 1619-20. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

I have rarely been so excited at an exhibition as I was when visiting Frans Hals at the National Gallery. I was excited to go, yes, but on seeing the first paintings, the thrill increased. I’ve seen quite a few of them before, and yet they seemed more brilliant than ever. His handling of paint is second to none – unprecedented in its freedom and apparent spontaneity – and his ability to capture both the appearance and character of his subjects is also unparalleled. I have no doubt that he was a better painter than Johannes Vermeer, but was he a better artist? Well, that depends on how you define artistry, and it also relies on personal taste. I certainly think people should be queuing round the block to see this exhibition, but perhaps the fact that Hals was far more productive than Vermeer means that it does not seem so ‘special’. Or maybe it’s because there are no novels or films inspired by his work… But you must go – you’re in for a treat! Either that, or sign up for my talk this Monday, 16 October at 6pm. The following week I will look at another of the 17^th Century’s most dazzling artists, Peter Paul Rubens, whose output was even greater than that of Hals, but don’t let that blind you to his virtuosity and subtlety. In subsequent weeks I will introduce an intriguing exhibition currently in Hamburg, Ingenious Women, and return to the National Portrait Gallery for a third visit – looking at (some of) The Georgians. Before then, though, a new project: in-person tours. This is a trial, looking at the early Italian paintings in the National Gallery, which have been beautifully rehung and superbly lit in the lower galleries. I will give the same 90-minute tour twice, at 11:00am and 2:30pm on Thursday 9 November, and am limiting the numbers for a better experience. These links will take you to Eventbrite, which is better for in-person events than Tixoom, I believe.

This is a relatively early painting by Frans Hals, although he seems to have been a slow starter: he would have been about 37 or 8 when it was painted. Having said that, he was still working at the age of 80, so there was more than enough time for him to catch up. As an ‘early work’, though, there is absolutely no sense that he was still learning – it is a painting of the most profound brilliance, both in terms of its technique and its originality. The basic idea may seem quite simple, and yet it is entirely innovative. The rising merchant class of what would be recognised, about three decades after this was painted, as the Dutch Republic wanted you to know who they were, and so portraiture reached new heights. It was not only the pater familias who should be represented – and so commemorated for future generations – but also the lady of the house. She usually retained her own family’s name as a sign that she was from a background of equal status to that of her husband. And then there was the hope for the next generation, and the continuation of the greatness which husband and wife brought with them. Young Catharina Hooft is presented to us as the queen of the household, ruling over her domain, supported by her most loyal courtier, her nurse. And that is what is truly astonishing about this painting. In the tradition of family portraiture, which was still developing, boys were watched over by their fathers (to the right – our left – of the family), and were frequently shown learning what it was to be a man. On the left (our right), the girls are with their mothers, preparing to be good wives – and so, good mothers – with flowers (beauty), fruit (fertility) or dolls (maternity)… In this case, though, we have a servant, who receives almost as much attention as the young mistress. Portraits were usually of the great and the good, and servants, if included (and I can think of a couple of examples), tended to be in the background, or off to one side. Placing the nurse at the centre of attention is entirely unorthodox, but a stroke of genius.

Not much to see in this detail, you might think, and yet – Catharina’s dress takes up about one third of the surface of the portrait. Not a huge amount of fabric, admittedly, given the size of the subject, and yet, relative to the size of the subject no expense has been spared. Catharina Hooft was born on 28 December 1618, and would have been less than two – possibly less than one – when this was painted. To say that her skirts would reach to the floor implies that she was able to stand. They certainly allow for movement, as the dress is incredibly broad for her tiny frame. This wealth of material is overlaid by what appears to be a second, shorter overskirt attached to her bodice or jacket. Every square centimetre is richly embroidered – in gold – with stylised foliage and fruits, which not only emphasizes the enormous wealth of the family to which she belongs, but also the fact that the same wealth is reliant on her future fecundity for it to remain within the family down through the generations – not something that would have occurred to her just yet, I would imagine. She would marry at the age of 16, though.

As well as the overskirt, there are full-length embroidered sleeves and an embroidered cape attached across her shoulders, not to mention the most delicate starched lace cuffs and collar. She has multiple gold chains around her neck from which hangs a polished red jewel, as well as an equivalent gold bracelet and a gold belt (the last of these more subtle). The necklace frames a beautiful section in the lace panel which runs the length of her bodice, one of three octagonal details, the other two of which are disguised by the jewel and belt. In her left hand she is holding a rattle, with a teether that appears to be silver, set in a gold mount. However, it is more likely to be ivory (coral was another common material used for teething). There are also gold bells, which, as well as amusing the child, were also supposed to ward of evil spirits, as was coral, if used. The nurse is holding an apple, proffering it to her ward, and I can’t help seeing the apple and rattle as standing in for an orb and sceptre. In 1631 Velázquez would use this metaphor in a portrait of the young Balthasar Carlos, heir to the throne of Spain. The objects in question are held by one of the court dwarves, who stands in front of the Prince acting as a mock monarch. Hals, despite living in a republic which was in the process of freeing itself from Spanish rule, seems to have got there a decade earlier, and so Catharina appears as a proper little princess, heiress to the family fortunes.

Of course, the full force of the painting comes from the faces. Catharina is surprisingly self-possessed for one so young – but then, that was Hals’s great talent: the communication of character. She looks us straight in the eye, a pleasant smile on her face, her plump, pink cheeks glowing from her otherwise pale (and therefore, given the time, genteel) complexion. Her entirely delightful appearance is framed by a diadem-like lace fringe on her headdress, and the starched, lace-trimmed collar which we noted before. Light reflects from the collar onto the side of her cheek, helping to define the curve of her jaw. The nurse’s expression is more equivocal – a smile, yes, but one that speaks of duty and service. Her complexion is slightly swarthier – she is of humble origins, after all – and she does not look us fully in the eye: she has something on her mind, undoubtedly. Her headdress is not without ornament – thin bands of lace – and her simple ruff is fastened with a red ribbon, a hint of which can be seen where the collar parts at the front. And at this juncture is the most wonderful gesture, the action of a child who is not fully in command of their limbs, as Catherina reaches out to her nurse to touch, or hold, or show affection, or maybe distance – as if she were saying ‘don’t get too close – this is about me’. There are many elements which differentiate the status of the two subjects of this portrait, Catharina’s gesture being just one. The complexions, and the complexity of dress are two more, and there is also an interesting difference in the way the mouths are painted.

In both, the lips are divided by a simple painted line. For the nurse this is a particularly bold brushstroke, rough and ready like the woman herself. For Catharina it is far finer, and more delicate. But then, she is only one, or two at the most… It’s not a technique I noticed Hals using in the other portraits, but maybe I didn’t look closely enough, so I’m heading back in there now to check – I’ll let you know what I find on Monday. I’d love to tell you more about Catharina’s future – but I’ve said enough already. She does have a Wikipedia page of her own, though, so you can check there to see what happened next, and how she looked as a ‘grown up’. Well, at eighteen – but she’d been married for two years already by then, so…

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, 1872-3. Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow.

Last year, in March, I wrote about Whistler’s Mother, and on Monday I will talk about Whistler’s Wife – Beatrix Birnie Philip. However, as the official title of the former is Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 1, today I thought it would be a good idea to talk about No. 2, currently to be found in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow. As it happens, the best collection of Beatrix Birnie Philip’s work is not far away, belonging as it does to the University of Glasgow, on the other side of Kelvingrove Park. That they can be found in the same city is not entirely coincidental, and yet not entirely connected. I will talk about Whistler – and his Wife this Monday, 11 September at 6pm, and the following week I will be in Glasgow itself. To end my somewhat Scottish September, on the Monday 25th I will introduce the Fleming Collection’s rewarding exhibition of Scottish Women Artists. Mondays in October will be dedicated to portraiture, and particularly that of the 17^th Century. I will start by giving two talks dedicated to the recently refurbished and re-opened National Portrait Gallery in London, looking at the 16^th and 17^th Centuries respectively (later dates, looking at later dates, may follow), and continue with introductions to the Hals and Rubens exhibitions at the National and Dulwich Picture Galleries (the latter not entirely portraiture). Information about all of this will be added to the diary soon.

When I wrote about Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 1 (see 151 – Mommie dearest) I pointed out that the title of the painting makes no mention of it being a portrait. Regardless of the ‘subject’, it is, rather, an example of Whistler’s ongoing concern with ‘Art for Art’s sake’ – but more about that on Monday. The same is not true here. Although the painting was displayed under several different titles during Whistler’s lifetime (if you want a full list, go to the University of Glasgow’s encyclopaedic website), it is now generally given the full title Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, and the fact that it was a portrait was acknowledged throughout its early history. Carlyle, the great Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher, had seen No. 1 in Whistler’s studio at 2 Lindsey Row, Chelsea (the address is now 96 Cheyne Walk). Carlyle lived just round the corner, at 24 Cheyne Row (you can visit on Wednesdays – Carlyle’s House is now owned by the National Trust), which Google Maps tells me is only 7 minutes’ walk from Whistler’s former studio.

Like Anna McNeill (Whistler’s mother), Thomas Carlyle sits in profile facing to our left, against the same grey wall with the same black wainscot, the same chair sitting on the same beige floor. However, there are notable differences. For a start, No. 1 is almost square, but subtly in landscape format, whereas the format for No. 2 is definitely ‘portrait’. Is this a statement of intent, or was it decided by the ‘necessity’ of the composition? I’m not sure we can say. An ‘oriental’ curtain hangs to the left in No. 1, which might reflect the everyday interior decoration: the critic William Michael Rossetti – brother of Dante Gabriel and Christina – said of 2 Lindsey Row that ‘Whistler has got up the rooms with many delightful Japanesisms’. However, the black drape, speckled with grey, does not make an appearance in No. 2: maybe it is, after all, more of a ‘portrait’ than an ‘arrangement’. There is one print visible on the wall in No. 1, with the edge of the frame of a second just visible behind Mother’s head. In No. 2 there are two prints, which help to balance the vertical of Carlyle’s torso on the other side of the composition.

I don’t know whether these two prints have been identified (the one hanging near Whistler’s mother has, see 151), but Whistler decided on the imagery early on. Prints with the same format, and apparently the same subject matter, appear in a study for Arrangement… No. 2 which is now in the Art Institute of Chicago (I’ll show you the study, and other preparatory material, on Monday). Top and bottom are in portrait and landscape format respectively, with the imagery in the top print apparently contained within an oval, with an inscription running along the bottom. The lower image is a dark rectangle, but with a horizon line above which a tower projects in the centre: it is clearly a topographical landscape. They might well be Whistler’s own prints, and it might be possible to identify them. Someone might have done so already, but I suspect the University of Glasgow’s website would include the relevant images if they had.

Carlyle himself appears rather sad. It has been suggested that he was still in mourning for his wife, Jane, who had died six years previously, in April 1866. He was certainly not a happy man at this time, writing in his journal, ‘More and more dreary, barren, base and ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor diminishing quack world’ (which reads like a mangled version of Hamlet’s first soliloquy in Act 1, scene 2: ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!’). The melancholy aspect of the figure was one of elements of the painting that Whistler himself appreciated, saying, nearly two decades after it had been completed, ‘He is a favourite of mine. I like the gentle sadness about him! – perhaps he was even sensitive – and even misunderstood – who knows!’

The background of the painting is taken up with three bands of colour. At the top is the cool grey of the wall, stretching a little more than half the height of painting. The beige floor (a carpet?) fills the bottom quarter, with the black wainscot taking up the remainder. A brown rug, or cape, falls over Carlyle’s knees – quite possibly related to the fact that he had not been well. His niece once contacted Whistler to say that he was too ill to attend that day’s sitting, but would be there the following week. But the rug, or cape, is also there for the composition, and for the colour and tonal harmony: Whistler’s mature works are all predicated on the balance, and the perception, of closely related tones (the scale from light to dark) and hues (colours). The brown of the cape, or rug, sits half-way between the colour of the floor and the black of Carlyle’s jacket, while the wall translates the floor’s beige to grey and provides a foil to the hair and beard. Having the extra fabric draped over his knees also strengthens the triangular composition of the figure as a whole.

The cape also harmonises with the gold frame of the lower print: these echoes are what makes Whistler’s work sing. Notice how a tiny, triangular patch of the seat is visible. In tone it matches Carlyle’s left hand, which is resting on his knee, perfectly, even if the hue is not exactly the same. There is a contrast between the hands – one visible, resting on his lap, the other gloved, holding his stick, the first light, the second dark. The un-gloved hand has the same hue and tone as the face, which is above the exposed area of the seat, creating a sense of stability: no slouching here! Balancing the un-gloved hand, on the horizontal, is Whistler’s ‘signature’: a butterfly with a sting. These four light ‘notes’ form an irregular diamond, again adding to the sense of stability. Carlyle’s hat rests on his knee – he is a visitor here, certainly not at home, and not entirely relaxed. The hat overlaps the lower picture frame, thus connecting the sitter to the print: does that have any significance for his life? Or character? Unless the print can be identified, we will never know.

Carlyle liked the painting, his niece writing, ‘even my uncle is beginning to be impressed with the portrait; he remarked to me when he returned from his last sitting “that he really couldn’t help observing that it was going to be very like him, and that there was a certain massive originality about the whole thing, which was rather impressive!”’ However, he wasn’t entirely happy about the process of sitting, commenting at one point that Whistler’s ‘anxiety seemed to be to get the coat painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.’ This is confirmed by the painting itself. There are numerous layers and alterations making up the coat, whereas the face is painted relatively thinly.

This was not the first time that Carlyle had been the subject of art. Five years before the sittings for Whistler had begun, he was photographed by one of the great, early photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron. She was so determined to take his picture that she travelled all the way from her home on the Isle of Wight to London to meet him – with her camera. Cameras were not the easiest things to transport in the 1860s. One of the resulting portrait is below, on the left. She later wrote, ‘When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.’ Carlyle also appeared in Ford Madox Brown’s masterpiece, Work – although I’m assuming he didn’t pose for this. He appears in a detail on the right of the picture, and you can recognise him as much from the signature stick, on which he leans, as from the likeness (although as a portrait – or even a face – I think it is sadly lacking: possibly the poorest passage in the painting).

This is the second, smaller version of Work, owned by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and dated 1859-63. The idea was to encompass the whole of Victorian society, from the wealthy on horseback in the background, to the manual labourers, poor, and indigent in the foreground, the latter grouping chosen from types characterized in Henry Mayhew’s book London Labour and the London Poor (1840). Thomas Carlyle stands on the right of the painting next to F. D. Maurice, one of the founders of the Christian Socialism movement. Carlyle is included as a result of his book Past and Present (1843), in which he praised the work ethic, embodied in the line, ‘On the whole we do entirely agree with those old monks, LABORARE EST ORARE: Work is Worship’. Ironically it was ideas derived from Carlyle’s theories which led John Ruskin to condemn the high prices asked by Whistler, an outburst in print which led to a notorious libel case. I’ll try and cover that on Monday, too.

However much he liked the portrait, Carlyle did not buy it. Completed in 1873, it was finally purchased in 1891 by the Corporation of the City of Glasgow, at the behest of the Glasgow Boys. Not only were the Boys the leading artists in the Second City of Empire at the time, but some of them were also Whistler’s neighbours in Chelsea. Their insistence on this particular painting was related to Carlyle’s position as one of the leading thinkers in recent Scottish history. Whistler himself was also proud of his Scottish heritage: his mother Anna was a descendent of the McNeills of Barra. However, the history of the painting, and its purchase, are far too complicated to relate here, but again you can find the intricate details on the University of Glasgow’s website.

Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 2 was the first painting by Whistler to enter a British public collection – and notably, a Scottish one. In 1903 – the year of his death – he was to receive an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow. This may be the reason why, in 1936, his sister-in-law and heir, Rosalind Birnie Philip, bequeathed his estate to the University. Well, that and the fact that Whistler himself insisted that nothing be left to an English collection. This explains the University’s remarkable holdings of his – and of Beatrix’s – work. One of his paintings, for which Beatrix modelled, is entitled Harmony in Red: Lamplight (c. 1884-86). It is currently on show in the Hunterian Art Gallery, and you can see it below, on the left. Like Whistler’s Mother, there is no implication in the title that Whistler’s Wife is a portrait – although, having said that, they wouldn’t marry until 1888, two years after it was completed. On the right is a painting by Beatrix herself from the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. I chose this one because I am intrigued that the colour of the wall is so close to the palette of Whistler’s painting. It is entitled Peach Blossom, giving us no clue as to its meaning or content, nor even why it has that title – presumably the reference is to the colour of the dress. As we will see on Monday, they were clearly meant for each other.