Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1

Whistler painted his mother in 1871, in a rented house in Chelsea, London. Anna McNeill Whistler was 67, living with her son after the death of her husband. She was available, she was patient, and she sat for him without complaint. An older woman in a black dress and lace cap sits in profile on a wooden chair, facing left. Her hands rest in her lap, one on the other. Behind her, a grey wall with a few framed pictures hanging at the left edge. A curtain hangs at the lower left, dark green or black. The floor is a muted brown. The entire painting is built from greys and blacks, with a single pale face and a small white lace cap as the only bright notes. Whistler was 37 when he painted this. He had been in London since 1859, arguing for art as an arrangement of color and form rather than a narrative or a moral lesson. He gave his paintings musical titles: Symphonies, Nocturnes, Arrangements. This one he called Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1. The fact that the sitter was his mother was, to him, incidental to the painting's purpose, which was to compose a picture in tones of grey. The painting was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1872. Whistler showed it at the Free Society instead, where it attracted little attention. It traveled to Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, and was eventually bought by the French state in 1891 for the Luxembourg Museum. It moved to the Louvre and then to the Musée d'Orsay, where it has been since 1986. In France it is treated as a major work. In America it became a civic icon, reproduced on stamps and coins, which would have irritated Whistler, who wanted it seen as a formal exercise, not a portrait of motherhood. Oil on canvas, 144 by 162 centimeters, roughly 57 by 64 inches. Whistler painted with thin, controlled layers, building the greys from mixtures of black, white, and touches of brown and blue. The surface is smooth, almost flat, with no visible brushwork. The black dress is a single unmodulated field of paint, the lace cap rendered in tiny strokes of white. The restrained palette and quiet subject make this print work well in a study, hallway, or bedroom with neutral walls. The horizontal format suits a wide, low wall space. A black frame matches the painting's tonal range. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the figure enough presence to read from across a room. The painting is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, acquired by the French state in 1891. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.