Whistlers Mother, James Abbott McNeill Whistler – 1600x1200 James Abbott Mcneill Whistler (1834-1903)

Description of Jams Whistler’s Portrait of a Mother

"Portrait of a Mother" is one of Whistler’s most recognizable works. The canvas is currently in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The portrait was painted in 1871. The first exhibition at which it could be seen by the public was in 1872 in London.

As can be easily guessed, the portrait depicts the painter’s mother, Anne MacNeil Whistler. The canvas is imbued with a deep psychology. The hunched, dark figure of an elderly woman is staring at one point, sitting on a chair with her hands folded in her lap. She is dressed in a floor-length black dress, a light-colored cap, and clutches a handkerchief in her hands.

Not only the heroine speaks to us, but also the surroundings: the curtains and the painting on the wall are worked out to the smallest detail. There is no single version of how the painting was created.

There are two variations: either the artist’s mother was to be the model from the very beginning, but she posed sitting up as she could not stand. Or another version: originally in her place would have been completely different model, at the last moment refused to pose Whistler, and then he invited his mother.

What is the meaning of the picture? For a long time it was thought that the painting was a symbol of the so-called cult of the mother, but Whistler himself did not want that. He wanted his work to be valued primarily for its form and only secondarily for the content and meaning behind it. Once, in an argument with Ruskin, who criticized his work, Whistler declared that he wanted to be paid not for the two days he had spent painting, but for the time he had spent working and learning his skills and craftsmanship.

Curiously enough, "Portrait of a Mother" has appeared more than once in various films and TV series, and even cartoons: the well-known series about Mr. Bean, in some episodes of "The Simpsons", in the musical "Anything Goes" by K. Porter, and in "Naked Gun" one can see the birthmark in the shape of Whistler’s Mother.