Whistler's Mother

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2009)

Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother

Artist	James McNeill Whistler
Year	1871
Type	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: 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 inches (144.3 cm × 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, having toured in 1932-1934, appeared at the Atlanta Art Association in the fall of 1962.^[1] the National Gallery of Art in 1994 and the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2004. It appeared at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from June to September 2006.

History

Anna McNeill Whistler 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.

1934 Whistler's Mother (stamp)

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.

Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 2 (Thomas Carlyle)

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 painting 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, 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, 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."

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."

Both the "Whistler's Mother" and "Thomas Carlyle" were engraved by the English engraver Richard Josey.^[2]

In popular culture

Broncia Koller-Pinell. The Artist's mother (1907)

• The painting was featured prominently in the 1996 film Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, when Mr. Bean, played by Rowan Atkinson, was sent to the United States from England to oversee the installation of the painting in a California art museum. After sneezing on it, Bean wipes the painting with his handkerchief, but accidentally smears the mother's face with blue ink instead. Bean then attempted to clean the ink off using paint thinner, which washed off the ink, as well as the face. Bean ends up replacing the painting with a poster, while taking the original home with him and placing it over his mantelpiece, with a cartoon head drawn over the blank space where the mother's head had been. The version of the painting shown in this film is actually considerably smaller than the real painting.

• "Whistler's Mother" is also the title of an episode from the first season of the Fox television series Arrested Development.

• In one episode of the Hal Seeger cartoon Batfink, a valuable painting called "Whistler's Mother-in-Law".

• In a photoshoot of Cycle 5 of America's Next Top Model, contestant Jayla Rubinelli was instructed to pose in a modernized version of the painting as an ad for Olay Quench lotion.

• The painting can be seen in the background during one scene in Billy Wilder's film The Fortune Cookie.

• In the movie The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear one of the characters, Dr Albert S. Meinheimer, can only be told apart from his double by the birthmark in the shape of Whistler's Mother on his right buttock.

• The painting is referenced in the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, in the short story "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen, in the Cole Porter song, "You're the Top" from his 1934 musical Anything Goes, and (as "Mama Whister") in the Neil Diamond 1970 song Done Too Soon. The painting is referenced in the playbill of "Hi Mom!" (Brian De Palma, 1970)

• A 1967 episode of Lost in Space entitled "A Day at the Zoo" features, as one of zookeeper Farnum B's exhibits, a woman he calls "Mrs. Whistler." She is costumed like the subject of this painting, although unlike the painting she sits facing to the right from the viewer's perspective. Taken with comments Farnum makes, the viewer is expected to assume that he has kidnapped the actual subject of the painting, although this is later revealed as untrue.

• Volume 7 of the 1991 VHS release of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is titled "Whistler's Moose."

• A 1997 CD from Ray Stevens entitled "Hum It" features him dressed as Whistler's Mother.

• A video game made for Commodore 64 and Atari computers is named Whistler's Brother.

• In the 2003 movie, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Damian Drakes TVR Tuscan turns into a flying car when the codeword, 'Mother' is spoken.

Further reading

• Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon edited by Margaret F. MacDonald. ISBN 978-0853318569.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Whistler's Mother