Portrait of the Artist’s Mother

Anna Matilda McNeill grew up in North Carolina and at twenty seven married widower George Washington Whistler; she later gave birth to five children, though only two survived into adulthood. Her son James, born in 1834, became an American painter working mostly in England. He rejected sentimentality in art, championing instead the credo "art for art's sake"- a philosophy he underlined by naming his works arrangements, harmonies, and nocturnes rather than giving them narrative titles. This 1871 portrait came about somewhat by accident. Whistler had originally been painting a commissioned portrait of a young sitter, and when she failed to show for a sitting, his aging mother stood in, though her age meant she had to sit rather than stand for the long hours required. Anna appears in profile, dressed in black with a white lace cap. A handkerchief is resting in her lap, and behind her hangs a curtain patterned with Japanese motifs alongside a framed etching of Whistler's own. These details signal his fascination with Japonisme. The tonal restraint and geometric balance of the composition mattered more to Whistler than the sitter's identity, though critics and the public have long read tenderness and quiet resilience into it regardless of his intentions. After being rejected by the Royal Academy, the French government bought it in 1891. This made it the first American painting to be acquired by the Louvre. It became even more well known after appearing on a 1934 US postage stamp and became a symbol of maternal sacrifice during the Great Depression. It also made cameos in popular culture, from Cole Porter lyrics to Mr. Bean. Scholars still argue over whether it's a formal exercise or a psychological study or as most now agree, some inseparable mixture of both.