Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler

Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler

An arrangement, not a portrait

The painting’s real title is Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, and Whistler meant it. His mother, Anna McNeill Whistler, sits in strict profile on a plain chair, her feet on a footstool, in a black dress and a white cap with long lace ties. A handkerchief lies in her folded hands. Everything around her is a set of flat shapes: the grey wall, the black skirting, the pale rectangle of a framed etching (Whistler’s own Black Lion Wharf) and a dark curtain scattered with small flowers. The colours are almost none, and the calm of the picture comes from where each shape sits.

Portrait of the Painter’s Mother

Anna Whistler sat for it in 1871 at her son’s house in Chelsea. When it was shown at the Royal Academy the next year, after very nearly being rejected, it carried a second title, Portrait of the Painter’s Mother. Whistler later complained that the public should care about the picture, not about who the sitter was; the public took no notice, and the nickname stuck. After Thomas Carlyle saw the painting he agreed to sit for a similar composition, and the first picture became No. 1. In 1934 the United States put the image on its Mother’s Day stamp.

Where it hangs

The painting is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris; the French state bought it in 1891. It measures about 144 by 162 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 5,897-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 39 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée d’Orsay, Paris · Wikidata Q687182 · Wikimedia Commons