Whistler's Mother
Encyclopedia
Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler
. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 in (144.3 by 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design, and is now owned by the Musée d'Orsay
in Paris
. It occasionally tours worldwide. Although an icon of American art, it rarely appears in the United States.
posed for the painting while living in London
with her son.
Several unverifiable stories surround the making of the painting itself; one is that Anna Whistler acted as a replacement for another model who couldn't make the appointment. Another is that Whistler originally envisioned painting the model standing up, but that his mother was too uncomfortable to pose standing for an extended period.
The work was shown at the 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art
in London (1872), but first came within a hair's breadth of rejection by the Academy. This episode worsened the rift between Whistler and the British art world; Arrangement would be the last painting he would submit for the Academy's approval.
The sensibilities of a Victorian era
viewing audience would not accept what was apparently a portrait being exhibited as a mere "arrangement"; thus the explanatory title "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" was appended. It was from this that the work acquired its popular name. After Thomas Carlyle
viewed the painting, he agreed to sit for a similar composition, this one being titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2
. Thus the previous painting became Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 more or less by default.
Whistler would eventually pawn the painting, which was acquired in 1891 by Paris' Musée du Luxembourg
. Whistler's works, including this one, had attracted a number of imitators and a number of similarly posed and restricted colour palette paintings soon appeared particularly by American expatriate painters. For Whistler, having one of his paintings displayed in a major museum helped attract wealthy patrons. In December 1884, Whistler wrote:
As a proponent of ars gratia artis
, Whistler professed to be perplexed and annoyed by the insistence of others upon viewing his work as a "portrait." In his 1890 book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he writes:
Given this outlook, whatever the level of affection Whistler may have felt for his own mother, one finds an even more divergent use of the image in the Victorian era and later, especially in the United States
, as an icon for mother
hood, affection for parents, and "family values" in general. For example, in 1934 the U.S. Post office
issued a stamp engraved with a stylized image of "Whistler's Mother," accompanied by the slogan "In Memory and In Honor of the Mothers of America." Both the "Whistler's Mother" and "Thomas Carlyle" were engraved by the English engraver Richard Josey
.
Later the public's interpretation of the symbolism of the painting went even farther afield, and it appeared in a myriad of commercial advertisements and parodies
, such as doctored images of the subject watching a television
, sometimes accompanied by slogans such as "Whistler's Mother is Off Her Rocker."
In summing up the painting's impact author Martha Tedeschi has stated:
in 1994 and the Detroit Institute of Arts
in 2004. It appeared at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from June to September 2006. Between May 22 and September 6, 2010, it was at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
in San Francisco.
, a contemporary French composer. In 1894, he wrote to violinist Eugène Ysaÿe
describing his Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one color - what a study in grey would be in painting." Although there is speculation on what he meant by musical 'color', be it orchestration or harmonic, one can observe 'shades' of a particular sound quality in his music.
, playing Mr. Bean
, a sleepy caretaker from Britain's "Royal National Gallery
" in London
. The painting of Whistler's Mother has been sold by the Musée d'Orsay to a military officer, who is donating it to a museum in Los Angeles
. The British museum is sending an art scholar to a conference to celebrate the event. The incompetent Mr. Bean, who cannot be fired, is sent to the conference to get rid of him. When Mr. Bean arrives at the gallery, he happens to sneeze on the painting. He then tries to wipe off some snot that accidentally came on the face of Whistler's Mother, but he isn't aware that his handkerchief is full of blue ink. Now the face of Whistler's Mother is covered with blue ink. After a second try to remove the ink with some chemicals, the face of the Mother melts from the painting. Left is just a big white spot where the face used to appear. To cover over this huge scandal, Bean uses a poster of the painting, glued to the frame with some gum. At the official opening it now looks like nothing really happened to the face of Whistler's Mother and nobody knows that Bean destroyed the valuable painting.
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 in (144.3 by 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design, and is now owned by the Musée d'Orsay
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture,...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. It occasionally tours worldwide. Although an icon of American art, it rarely appears in the United States.
History
Anna McNeill WhistlerAnna McNeill Whistler
Anna Matilda Whistler was the mother of American-born, British-based painter, James McNeill Whistler, who made her the subject of his famous painting "Arrangement in Grey & Black", often titled, Whistler's Mother.-Biography:Anna McNeill Whistler was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the...
posed for the painting while living in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
with her son.
Several unverifiable stories surround the making of the painting itself; one is that Anna Whistler acted as a replacement for another model who couldn't make the appointment. Another is that Whistler originally envisioned painting the model standing up, but that his mother was too uncomfortable to pose standing for an extended period.
The work was shown at the 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art
Royal Academy summer exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...
in London (1872), but first came within a hair's breadth of rejection by the Academy. This episode worsened the rift between Whistler and the British art world; Arrangement would be the last painting he would submit for the Academy's approval.
The sensibilities of a Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
viewing audience would not accept what was apparently a portrait being exhibited as a mere "arrangement"; thus the explanatory title "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" was appended. It was from this that the work acquired its popular name. After Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
viewed the painting, he agreed to sit for a similar composition, this one being titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle is an 1872-3 oil painting by James McNeill Whistler. It depicts the Scottish social critic, philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle in a composition similar to that of Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the...
. Thus the previous painting became Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 more or less by default.
Whistler would eventually pawn the painting, which was acquired in 1891 by Paris' Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg is a museum in Paris, France. It occupies the east wing of the Palais du Luxembourg, whose matching west wing originally housed Ruben's Marie de' Medici cycle. Since 2000 it has been run by the French Ministry of Culture and the Senate and is devoted to temporary exhibitions...
. Whistler's works, including this one, had attracted a number of imitators and a number of similarly posed and restricted colour palette paintings soon appeared particularly by American expatriate painters. For Whistler, having one of his paintings displayed in a major museum helped attract wealthy patrons. In December 1884, Whistler wrote:
- "Just think — to go and look at one's own picture hanging on the walls of Luxembourg — remembering how it had been treated in England — to be met everywhere with deference and respect...and to know that all this is ... a tremendous slap in the face to the Academy and the rest! Really it is like a dream."
As a proponent of ars gratia artis
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
, Whistler professed to be perplexed and annoyed by the insistence of others upon viewing his work as a "portrait." In his 1890 book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he writes:
- Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an "Arrangement in Grey and Black." Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?
Given this outlook, whatever the level of affection Whistler may have felt for his own mother, one finds an even more divergent use of the image in the Victorian era and later, especially in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, as an icon for mother
Mother
A mother, mum, mom, momma, or mama is a woman who has raised a child, given birth to a child, and/or supplied the ovum that grew into a child. Because of the complexity and differences of a mother's social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to specify a universally...
hood, affection for parents, and "family values" in general. For example, in 1934 the U.S. Post office
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a stamp engraved with a stylized image of "Whistler's Mother," accompanied by the slogan "In Memory and In Honor of the Mothers of America." Both the "Whistler's Mother" and "Thomas Carlyle" were engraved by the English engraver Richard Josey
Richard Josey
Richard Josey was a prominent mezzotint engraver in Victorian London.Josey was born at Reading in 1840, and received his education at the Reading Blue Coat School. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to Thomas W. Knight, and on the expiration of his apprenticeship he worked in the studio of the...
.
Later the public's interpretation of the symbolism of the painting went even farther afield, and it appeared in a myriad of commercial advertisements and parodies
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, such as doctored images of the subject watching a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, sometimes accompanied by slogans such as "Whistler's Mother is Off Her Rocker."
In summing up the painting's impact author Martha Tedeschi has stated:
" Whistler's Mother, WoodGrant WoodGrant DeVolson Wood was an American painter, born four miles east of Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.- Life and career :His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his...
's American GothicAmerican GothicAmerican Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that...
, Leonardo da VinciLeonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's Mona LisaMona LisaMona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
and Edvard MunchEdvard MunchEdvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
's The ScreamThe ScreamScream is the title of Expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky...
have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer. These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture."
Appearances in American museums
Whistler’s Mother rarely appears in the United States. It appeared at the Atlanta Art Association in the fall of 1962, the National Gallery of ArtNational Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in 1994 and the Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
in 2004. It appeared at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from June to September 2006. Between May 22 and September 6, 2010, it was at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, commonly called simply the de Young Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H...
in San Francisco.
In music
Whistler and particularly this painting had a profound effect on Claude DebussyClaude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, a contemporary French composer. In 1894, he wrote to violinist Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
describing his Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one color - what a study in grey would be in painting." Although there is speculation on what he meant by musical 'color', be it orchestration or harmonic, one can observe 'shades' of a particular sound quality in his music.
Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie
In 1997, Whistler`s Mother had a leading role in the comedy movie, Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie. Here the famous painting appears with the British comedian Rowan AtkinsonRowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...
, playing Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean is a British comedy television programme series of 14 half-hour episodes written by and starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character. Different episodes were also written by Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis and one by Ben Elton. The pilot episode was broadcast on ITV on 1 January 1990,...
, a sleepy caretaker from Britain's "Royal National Gallery
National gallery
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...
" in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The painting of Whistler's Mother has been sold by the Musée d'Orsay to a military officer, who is donating it to a museum in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The British museum is sending an art scholar to a conference to celebrate the event. The incompetent Mr. Bean, who cannot be fired, is sent to the conference to get rid of him. When Mr. Bean arrives at the gallery, he happens to sneeze on the painting. He then tries to wipe off some snot that accidentally came on the face of Whistler's Mother, but he isn't aware that his handkerchief is full of blue ink. Now the face of Whistler's Mother is covered with blue ink. After a second try to remove the ink with some chemicals, the face of the Mother melts from the painting. Left is just a big white spot where the face used to appear. To cover over this huge scandal, Bean uses a poster of the painting, glued to the frame with some gum. At the official opening it now looks like nothing really happened to the face of Whistler's Mother and nobody knows that Bean destroyed the valuable painting.
Further reading
- Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon edited by Margaret F. MacDonald. ISBN 978-0853318569.
- Weintraub, Stanley. 2001. Whistler: a biography (New York: Da Capo Press). ISBN 9780306809712