Marble relief (Block IV) from the East frieze of the Parthenon. The frieze shows the procession of the Panathenaic festival, the commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena. Acc no 1816,0610.18
The Elgin frieze, whether the groups of seated deities or the Panathenaic procession, was also the crucial classical source for Whistler and Moore, and it has already been noted that The Lament finds many parallels in their work (see p. 114). The most striking are The Marble Seat by Moore (fig. 74), his first fully Aesthetic picture, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, and Whistler's Symphony in White, No. j (fig. 75), begun that year and exhibited at the Academy in 1867. The three pic- tures are contemporary; all depend, to one degree or another, on the same source; and although the Moore is lost, and now known only from an old photograph, it is safe to say that all were carefully orchestrated colour harmonies in a light key. One of the most interesting points of comparison is the way in which Burne-Jones and Whistler both introduce sprays of foliage and blossom at the right in their pictures, partly for compositional purposes but also to help create the desired chromatic effect. It is not impossible that Burne-Jones, like Whistler, had Japanese art in mind at this point, thus seeking the synthesis between classical and Far Eastern art on which Aestheticism was so largely based.