Dusty Art

My prior Art posts can be found HERE.

How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..

Let’s study art history together.

Whistler’s Mother

Artist	James McNeill Whistler
Year	1871
Medium	Oil on canvas
Movement	Realism
Subject	Anna McNeill Whistler
Dimensions	144.3 cm × 162.4 cm (56.81 in × 63.94 in)
Location	Musée d’Orsay, Paris

This painting has a pretty simple story. The artist did a portrait of his aging mother. However, the end result was that he created one of the most revered pieces of art from the 19th century – a piece sometimes compared to the Mona Lisa.

The more you look at this painting, the more that you notice. It’s a sign of genius, I think, when you make something layered and complex appear to be simple.

(More on the painting, via wiki)

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler’s Mother or Portrait of Artist’s Mother, is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871. The subject of the painting is Whistler’s mother, Anna McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (1,443 mm × 1,624 mm), displayed in a frame of Whistler’s own design. It is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon and a Victorian Mona Lisa.

History

Anna McNeill Whistler posed for the painting while living in London with her son at 96 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Several unverifiable stories relate to the painting of the work; one is that Anna Whistler acted as a replacement for another model who could not make the appointment. Whistler originally envisioned painting the model standing up. However, his mother was too uncomfortable to pose standing for an extended period.

The work was shown at the 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in London (1872), after coming within a hair’s breadth of rejection by the academy. This episode worsened the rift between Whistler and the British art world; Arrangement was the last painting he submitted for the academy’s approval (although his etching of Old Putney Bridge was exhibited there in 1879). Vol. VIII of The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (by Algernon Graves, F.S.A., London 1906) lists the 1872 exhibit as no. 941, “Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s mother”, and gives Whistler’s address as The White House, Chelsea Embankment.

The sensibilities of a Victorian era viewing audience would not accept what was a portrait exhibited as an “arrangement”, hence the addition of the explanatory title Portrait of the Painter’s mother. From this, the work acquired its enduring nickname of simply Whistler’s Mother. After Thomas Carlyle viewed the painting, he agreed to sit for a similar composition, this one titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2. Thus the previous painting became, by default, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1.

Whistler eventually pawned the painting, acquired in 1891 by Paris’s Musée du Luxembourg. Whistler’s works, including this one, had attracted several imitators. Numerous similarly posed and restricted-colour palette paintings soon appeared, particularly by American expatriate painters. For Whistler, having one of his paintings displayed in a major museum helped attract wealthy patrons. In December 1884, Whistler wrote:

Just think—to go and look at one’s own picture hanging on the walls of Luxembourg—remembering how it had been treated in England—to be met everywhere with deference and respect…and to know that all this is … a tremendous slap in the face to the Academy and the rest! Really it is like a dream.

As a proponent of “art for art’s sake“, Whistler professed to be perplexed and annoyed by the insistence of others upon viewing his work as a “portrait”. In his 1890 book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he wrote:

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?

Both Whistler’s Mother and Thomas Carlyle were engraved by the English engraver Richard Josey. The image has been used since the Victorian era as an icon for motherhood, affection for parents, and “family values” in general, especially in the United States. For example, in 1934, the U.S. Post Office Department issued a stamp engraved with the portrait detail from Whistler’s Mother, bearing the slogan “In memory and in honor of the mothers of America.” In the Borough of Ashland, Pennsylvania, an eight-foot-high statue based on the painting was erected as a tribute to mothers by the Ashland Boys’ Association in 1938, during the Great Depression.

In summing up the painting’s influence, art historian Martha Tedeschi has stated:

Whistler’s Mother, Wood‘s American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci‘s Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch‘s The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer. These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture.

I find it fascinating that the painter cared so little that his model was his mother. He wanted the painting to speak for itself and he guessed that the public would not care about whom is was a portrait. I don’t know, though. Getting your aged mother to sit for a portrait is sweet and I think the backstory is a part of the work’s charm.

The last quote there says that this painting communicates something specific. If I knew nothing else about this piece, I’d see something of the heart of the Victorian Era in the work. Maybe that’s what he means by a “specific meaning.” The picture looks and feels as though it is hiding warmth beneath a cold, colorless, and formal exterior.