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‘OhI don’t like to make his mother as good as I can.” So James Abbott McNeill Whistler said about his successful painting of his mother Anna – or Arrangement in Gray and Black No 1 as he christened her. Whistler was not an unreasonably modest person, but in 2026 his words sound like nothing. In the last 100 years, Mrs. Whistler, as she is commonly called, has become the equivalent of America’s Mona Lisa. Anna has not stopped traveling around museums in the US and over the years This month, for the first time in two generations, it returns to London, the city that Anna photographed in Whistler’s Chelsea studio, as part of Whistler’s Tate Britain exhibition.
I knew every inch of the picture in many months, when I returned it to the Musée d’Orsay in the country it is now (I was sent by the Louvre, the owner of the painting). Whistler is the only artist whose portrait of his mother has reached the highest level – and his record is impressive.
The artist was a larger than life personality, with an endless store of brilliant aphorisms. A young Oscar Wilde was a student of his magic and once exclaimed, “I wish I did”, to which Whistler’s rapier replied, “But you will.” However, he was not just a funny guy. Walter Sickert, who worked as Whistler’s assistant, called him, “A symbol of light and joy for everyone who had the opportunity to enter his comforting and bright light.”
However, when Anna became his daughter in 1871, no one could have predicted the success of photography. Whistler’s life at that time was very difficult, and critics in London increased his work. Arrangement in Gray and Black No 1 was painted during a time of sadness. He spent four years as an American in Paris, living life BohemiaGarret, lord and all. Realizing that he had no chance to compete with his friends and Frenchmen Manet and Monet, he moved to London where the art scene was established and ripe for the revolutionary artist.
After the initial success of his Dreaming at the Piano (1858), painted when Whistler was only 25 years old, things went downhill. English collectors expected a painting to tell a story and he, then in his 30s, was pursuing what he called “visual poetry”. This was in stark contrast to the impressionists who took Paris by storm with their passion for light painting. Whistler had no interest in nature.
The photo was an accident. In 1871, the 15-year-old daughter of MP William Graham ran away to portray a beneficial image of society. Whistler asks Anna instead (it’s painted on the back of a used canvas, probably the one he used). His mother is able to stay with him in his studio instead of standing because of her health. The footstool in the painting would be another concession: a footstool in the cold, crepuscular, north-facing room of the house on Cheyne Walk.
Everything came out of the blue unexpectedly. Whistler was not a genius, but he had a similar voice and artistic flair. He was interested in her appearance and painted her deep black almost like ink as an experiment. The color that exists is in the thick paint of the people. Whistler’s mother’s history is her limited studio. Today, it was a nod to the riot of Victorian colors, tchotchkes and tapestries in fashion in London at the time.
When Whistler’s mother was exhibited at the Royal Academy after her friends had been so cruel to her, art experts were shocked. A critic for the Examiner newspaper gave Whistler the suspicion that the room scene with his mother was “probably” authentic, but he asserted that it was “not a portrait”, criticizing the use of only gray and black. It was only after an enthusiastic French government bought the painting in 1891 that British art experts admitted they had let a treasure slip through their fingers. It would take Britain another thirty years to realize the changes that were taking place under her nose.
With Mother, Whistler became the first in a line of famous American artists: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko to name a few. As a restorer, I can see how Whistler’s powers were uniquely American. Warhol once said, “My paintings don’t last. I used cheap paint”, and Whistler could have said the same. The black fabric of Anna’s skirt was already seen differently when France bought the Louvre paintings. Whistler didn’t help matters by putting it too soon for the event, and slathering the paint on the canvas like butter in toast. In many ways, the painting was as difficult to recreate as the Rothkos that are now quietly decaying in the basements of museums around the world.
At the same time, the heart of the painting cannot be destroyed as a painting about the love between a mother and a child. In a letter she wrote, she revealed how “fearless” Whistler was and that she kissed him when it was over. There is no art here. Anna always wore a black widow’s dress and a white bonnet. He was as devoted to his Puritan religion as Whistler was to his art and they respected each other without question.
Whistler accompanied his mother to Sunday mass, and when he moved in with her and her friend Jo Heffernan on Cheyne Walk, he seamlessly associated his louche art with scandalous friends, including Aubrey Beardsley and Algernon Swinburne. Only once, when he opened the door to his studio and found the maid looking “all over”, he quickly closed the door.
During the long period of its restoration, Whistler’s mother suddenly appeared next to Ingres’s large portrait of Napoleon decorated in all his glory. However, the king struggled to win over Carolina’s widow. Which makes sense: after all, if everyone’s life had one queen, wouldn’t it be his mother?
