{"id":684236,"date":"2026-05-21T02:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684236\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T02:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:03:16","slug":"americas-mona-lisa-how-chance-genius-and-cheap-paint-made-whistlers-mother-a-masterpiece-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684236\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018America\u2019s Mona Lisa\u2019: how chance, genius and cheap paint made Whistler\u2019s Mother a masterpiece | Painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018One does like to make one\u2019s mummy just as nice as possible.\u201d So James Abbott McNeill Whistler said about his triumphant painting of his mother Anna \u2013 or Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 as he christened it. Whistler was not a man given to undue modesty, but in 2026 his words sound like a rare understatement. Over the past century and a half, Whistler\u2019s Mother, as it is commonly known, has become America\u2019s equivalent of the Mona Lisa. Anna has never stopped travelling around museums in the US and beyond in those years. This month, for the first time in almost two generations, it will return to London, the city where Anna was painted in Whistler\u2019s Chelsea studio, as part of Tate Britain\u2019s Whistler show<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I got to know every inch of the picture over many months, as I restored it for the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay to the state it is in now (I was commissioned by the Louvre, the owner of the painting). Whistler is the only artist whose portrait of his mother has reached such superstar status \u2013 and its history is fascinating.<\/p>\n

double quotation markRealising he stood little chance against Manet and Monet, he moved to London<\/p>\n

The artist was a larger-than-life personality, with a never-ending store of dazzling aphorisms. The young Oscar Wilde was a disciple of his mordant wit and once exclaimed, \u201cI wish I had said that\u201d, to which Whistler rapier-like retorted, \u201cBut you will.\u201d However, he was far more than just an amusing man. Walter Sickert, who worked as Whistler\u2019s assistant, called him, \u201cA beacon of light and happiness to everyone who was privileged to come within its comforting and brightening rays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, when Anna sat for her son in 1871, nobody would have predicted the success of the painting. Whistler\u2019s life at the time was at a nadir, and London critics panned his work. Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 was painted in a moment of despair. He had spent four years as an American in Paris, living la vie boh\u00e8me, garret, mistresses and all. Realising that he stood little chance against his friends and French contemporaries Manet and Monet, he moved to London where the art scene was stuck and ripe for a revolutionary artist.<\/p>\n

\u2018The poetry of sight\u2019 \u2026 Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter, c 1872. Photograph: Detroit Institute of Arts<\/p>\n

After the initial success of his dreamy masterpiece At the Piano (1858), painted when Whistler was only 25, things had steadily gone downhill, however. English collectors rigidly expected a painting to tell a story and he, by then in his 30s, was doggedly pursuing what he called \u201cthe poetry of sight\u201d. This was radically different from the impressionists taking Paris by storm with their interest in capturing light. Whistler was not that interested in nature.<\/p>\n

The portrait actually came about by chance. In 1871, the 15-year-old daughter of William Graham MP had run off from posing for a lucrative society portrait. Whistler asked Anna instead (it is painted on the reverse of a used canvas, possibly the one he had been labouring on). His mother could sit for him in his studio rather than stand on account of her poor health. The footstool in the painting may even have been another concession: a footwarmer in the cold, crepuscular, north-facing studio of the house on Cheyne Walk.<\/p>\n

Everything suddenly came together in flashes of genius. Whistler was far from an intellectual, but he had the equivalent of perfect pitch for art. He was interested in its texture and painted its deep blacks almost like ink as an experiment. What colour there is lies in thick traditional paint. The background of Whistler\u2019s Mother is his minimalist studio. Very modern today, it was alien to the riot of Victorian colours, tchotchkes and tapestries in fashion in London at the time.<\/p>\n

When Whistler\u2019s Mother was exhibited at the Royal Academy after much arm-twisting by his friends, art experts were perplexed. A critic for the Examiner newspaper gave Whistler the benefit of the doubt that the likeness of the room and his mother were \u201cprobably\u201d true, but otherwise concluded \u201cit is not a picture\u201d, decrying the use of only grey and black. Only when the admiring French government bought the painting in 1891 did Britain\u2019s art establishment agree that it had let a valuable treasure slip through its fingers. It would take Britain another three decades to recognise the revolution that had happened under its nose.<\/p>\n

\u2018The heart of the painting is indestructible\u2019 \u2026 Sarah Walden. Photograph: Graham Turner\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

With Mother, Whistler became the first in the line of America\u2019s own great painters: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko to name but a few. As a restorer, I can clearly see how Whistler\u2019s burst of creative energy was uniquely American. Warhol once remarked, \u201cMy pictures won\u2019t last. I used cheap paint\u201d, and Whistler could easily have said something similar. The blacks of Anna\u2019s skirt already looked different when the French state bought the painting for the Louvre. Whistler didn\u2019t help matters by having it relined too soon for the occasion, soaking the paint into the canvas like butter into toast. In many ways, the painting was as tricky to restore as the now quietly decomposing Rothkos in the cellars of museums around the world.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the heart of the painting is indestructible as a touching portrait of the affection between a mother and son. In a letter she wrote, she revealed how Whistler \u201chad no nervous fears\u201d and that he kissed her when it was done. There is no artifice here. Anna always dressed in a widow\u2019s plain black dress with a white bonnet. She was as devoted to her Puritan religion as Whistler was to his art and they respected each other\u2019s devotion without question.<\/p>\n

Whistler accompanied his mother to Sunday mass, and when she moved in with him and his girlfriend Jo Heffernan on Cheyne Walk, she fused seamlessly into his artistic milieu of louche and outrageous friends, including Aubrey Beardsley and Algernon Swinburne. Only once, when she opened the door to his studio and found the maid posing in the \u201call over\u201d, did she quickly close the door.<\/p>\n

During the long process of her restoration, Whistler\u2019s Mother ended up by chance next to Ingres\u2019s enormous portrait of Napoleon decked out in all his imperial pomp. Yet the emperor struggled to overpower the widow from the Carolinas. Which makes sense: after all, if everyone\u2019s life had one empress, wouldn\u2019t it be one\u2019s mother?<\/p>\n

James McNeill Whistler is at Tate Britain, London<\/a>, from 21 May to 27 September. Whistler and His Mother: The Mystery of America\u2019s Most Famous Painting by Sarah Walden is published in paperback on 21 May(Gibson Square, \u00a314.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018One does like to make one\u2019s mummy just as nice as possible.\u201d So James Abbott McNeill Whistler said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-684236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}