James McNeill Whistler, "Arrangement in Grey & Black No. 1:Portrait of the Artist's Mother" (1871) Musee d'Orsay, Paris
The Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville announced this week that next October (2010), they will present The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. While the d’Orsay is still working on which paintings will be presented, it has announced that a true American masterpiece is coming home. Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey & Black No.1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (aka Whistler’s Mother) will be shown in America for the first time in 4 years.
It is interesting to me that this image is so ubiquitous and has been the subject of so much farce that we tend to forget how revolutionary and odd this painting was in the 1870s. He was the Chapman Bros. or the Damien Hirst of his times: everything he did was followed by the cries of alarm or outrage of the European art establishment.
This portrait came about quite by accident. Whistler’s mother, Anna, moved from America to London and shared an apartment with her son. The two made quite an odd couple: Whistler the free-living libertine, Anna the stern puritan. However, when one of Whistler’s models didn’t show up for a sitting. He asked his mother to sit for him, literally, saying it was something he had “always meant to do.” In terms of composition, color and subject matter it was truly revolutionary. Whistler was a proponent of the “art-for-art’s sake” movement and pointed to this portrait as a prime example: “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?”
A side note to all my fellow Cincinnatians: If you care not to travel down to Nashville (or if you want to and want to see something to bide your time), at least make sure you take in a visit to the Taft Museum of Art. There you can see Whistler’s first acknowledged masterpiece (below), a painting that caused quite a stir in its own right.
James McNeill Whistler, "At the Piano" (1858-9) Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati
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