Whistler's Mother

For the Arrested Development episode, see Whistler's Mother (Arrested Development).
"Portrait of the Artist's Mother" redirects here. For the van Gogh painting, see Portrait of the Artist's Mother (Van Gogh).
Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1
Artist James McNeill Whistler
Year 1871 (1871)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 144.3 cm × 162.4 cm (56.8 in × 63.9 in)
Location Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871. The subject of the painting is Whistler's mother, Anna McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (144.3 cm × 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design. It is exhibited in and held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon[1][2] and a Victorian Mona Lisa.[3]

History

Anna Whistler circa 1850s.

Anna McNeill Whistler posed for the painting while living in London with her son at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.[4]

Several unverifiable stories relate to the painting of the work; one is that Anna Whistler acted as a replacement for another model who couldn't make the appointment. It is also said that Whistler originally envisioned painting the model standing up, but that his mother was too uncomfortable to pose standing for an extended period.

Another story associated with the painting is that Whistler called upon his beautiful young neighbour, Helena Amelia Lindgren (1855-1931), of number 5, Lindsey Row, to sit in Anna's place when she grew too tired. Well into her old age, Helena talked of secretly modelling for Whistler, who was especially enamoured of her hands. According to a surviving letter of 1935 (now in the possession of Helena's great-great-grandson, David Charles Manners), Anna had first called on the Lindgrens to ask that Helena's older sister, Christina, be her stand-in. However, Christina's mother, Eliza Lyle née Warlters, forbade it. Ever a free spirit, Helena secretly offered herself instead and modeled for the portrait without her mother's knowledge.

The work was shown at the 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in London (1872), after coming within a hair's breadth of rejection by the Academy. This episode worsened the rift between Whistler and the British art world; Arrangement was the last painting he submitted for the Academy's approval.

The sensibilities of a Victorian era viewing audience would not accept what was apparently a portrait being exhibited as an "arrangement"; thus the explanatory title Portrait of the Artist's Mother was appended. From this the work acquired its popular name. After Thomas Carlyle viewed the painting, he agreed to sit for a similar composition, this one 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.

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2 (Thomas Carlyle)
Whistler's Mother
Issue of 1934
Mothers' Memorial
Ashland, PA

Whistler eventually pawned 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 numerous 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 art for art's sake, 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 wrote:[5]

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 do to care about the identity of the portrait?

The image has been used since the Victorian era, especially in the United States, as an icon for motherhood, 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 "Whistler's Mother" and "Thomas Carlyle" were engraved by the English engraver Richard Josey.[6] In the Borough of Ashland, Pennsylvania, an eight-foot high statue based on the painting was erected by the Ashland Boys' Association in 1938 during the Great Depression as a tribute to mothers.[7]

The image has been repeatedly appropriated for commercial advertisements and parodies, such as doctored images of the subject watching a television, and sometimes accompanied by captions such as "Whistler's Mother is Off Her Rocker."

In summing up the painting's influence, author Martha Tedeschi has stated:

Whistler's Mother, Wood's American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream 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.[8]

Exhibits in American museums

Whistler's Mother has been exhibited several times in the United States. It was shown at the Atlanta Art Association in the fall of 1962,[9] the National Gallery of Art in 1994, and the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2004.[10] It was exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from June to September 2006. From May 22 and to September 6, 2010, it was shown at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. The painting was exhibited at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, from March 27 to June 22, 2015,[11] and then at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Fight for Her, World War I recruitment poster from Canada, urging men to enlist with the Irish Canadian Rangers and to fight for the women in their lives. It appeals to notions of motherhood and family values that were popular at the time, and often attributed to this painting.

The painting has been featured or mentioned in numerous works of fiction and within pop culture, including films such as Sing and Like It (1934), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Babette's Feast (1986),[12] Bean (1997), and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) and television episodes of The Simpsons ("Rosebud",[13][14] "The Trouble with Trillions"[15][16] and "The Burns and The Bees") and the movie I Am Legend. The painting is mentioned in part six of Don Delillo's novel Underworld.

The 1997 Rowan Atkinson film Bean features the painting as a plot element. An American is buying the painting in order to return it to the United States. But Bean ruins the painting by using paint thinner after sneezing on it and then drawing a cartoon face on it. He surreptitiously replaces the painting with a poster from the museum shop.[17]

The film The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) features the shape of the painting as a birthmark that is used to identify a character after he is replaced with an "evil double".

The painting was featured in America's Next Top Model, Cycle 5 to inspire the photoshoots for Olay's Quench body lotion, in a modern interpretation of the classical artwork.

In music

Whistler, and particularly this painting, had a profound effect on Claude Debussy, a contemporary French composer. In 1894, Debussy 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." Whether Debussy was using the term color to refer to orchestration or harmony, critics have observed "shades" of a particular sound quality in his music.[18]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ MacDonald, Margaret (2003). Whistler's Mother: an American icon. Aldershot, Hampshire: Lund Humphries. p. cover. ISBN 978-0-85331-856-9.
  2. ↑ Hall, Dennis; Hall, Susan (2006). American Icons [Three Volumes]: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things that Have Shaped Our Culture. San Diego, California: Harcourt. p. 755. ISBN 978-0-85331-856-9.
  3. ↑ "Modern painters". 7. London: Fine Art Journals. 1994: 26. ISSN 0953-6698.
  4. ↑ 95-96 Cheyne Walk by Patrick Baty
  5. ↑ Whistler, James McNeil (1967). The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Dover Publications. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  6. ↑ University of Glasgow, James McNeil Whistler: The Etchings
  7. ↑ Whistler's Mother statue, Roadside America
  8. ↑ Margaret F. MacDonald, ed., Whistler's Mother: An American Icon, Lund Humphries, Burlington, Vt., 2003, p.121, ISBN 0-85331-856-5
  9. ↑ Airplane crash at Orly Field by Randy Golden in About North Georgia. In the fall of 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent Whistler's Mother to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street. Frank Zollner, John F. Kennedy and Leonardo's Mona Lisa: Art as the Continuation of Politics
  10. ↑ Symphony in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (“Whistler’s Mother”), Detroit Institute of Arts
  11. ↑ , Norton Simon Museum
  12. ↑ "Babette's Feast (1986)".
  13. ↑ ""The Simpsons" Rosebud (TV episode 1993) – IMDb". Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  14. ↑ "[1F01] Rosebud". Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  15. ↑ ""The Simpsons" The Trouble with Trillions (TV episode 1998) IMDb". Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  16. ↑ "5F14". Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  17. ↑ "Bean (1997)". Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  18. ↑ Weintraub, Stanley. 2001. Whistler: A Biography (New York: Da Capo Press). ISBN 978-0-306-80971-2, p. 351

Further reading

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