Artist's Mother

Have you ever watched the 1997 feature film based on the television series Mr. Bean which stars Rowan Atkinson in the title role and Peter MacNicol, Bean: The Movie? The movie featured a famous painting; the portrait Whistler's Mother. Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (144.3 cm × 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is now one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon.

In the movie Bean, the Grierson Art Gallery is given a donation of $50 million dollars by General Newton to buy the painting. Mr. Bean sneezes on the painting and when trying to remove it with a napkin, he discovers that he had a broken pen in his pocket, and covered the face with blue ink. In panic, he takes the painting down and tries to clean it, but knocks it out of its frame, and steps on it.. He runs to the janitor's closet and applies lacquer thinner on the face. He is relieved, as the blue ink disappears from the painting, and he happily puts away the lacquer thinner. However, when he turns around and sees the painting again, he'd added the wrong type of paint thinner, causing bubbles in the paint. In shock (again) he desperately tries to remove the bubbles from the painting, but instead he rubs all the paint off from the face. Not knowing what to do, he draws a cartoony, childish-looking face on the white spot and quickly takes the painting back to the room where it was being kept before.

He quickly locks the door because someone is trying to come in, and for safety reasons he pulls a big plant in front of the door to prevent it from opening. Instead, David Langley, his colleague, enters from the other door, which Bean hadn't noticed. He sees the painting is not on the wall and Bean shows him what he's done, horrifying David, who thinks he'll be fired and sued for this. The painting is put back and David and Bean leave. 

In the same night, Mr. Bean breaks into the museum, distracts the security guard by mixing an entire bottle of laxative into his cup of coffee and changing the men's room key with another key, to keep him out of the security office to buy time, so he won't be seen on the cameras. He then swaps the painting with a poster of it, sticking it onto the frame with chewing gum, and proceeds to cover the poster with raw egg yolk and heating it with a hairdryer, making it look like a real painting. Mr. Bean kept the actual painting for himself, and later took back his home in London, where he hung it on his bedroom wall.

This shows that the painting is so important. Popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother,” this painting appeared radical in its time for its spare, unsentimental, and unflattering portrayal of the painter’s mother. As noted in the quote above, Whistler insisted that the sitter’s identity was secondary to the painting’s aesthetic purpose: to organize shape and color in a pleasing manner.

While some understood Whistler’s goals, many wanted to derive some sentimentality from the portrait. More than one critic suggested that Whistler had depicted his mother “after her death.” Another complained that the work was the "experiment of an eccentric.” Nevertheless, the painting was shown in several European venues, receiving mixed reactions along the way. A critic wrote in the London Times in 1872: “An artist who could deal with large masses so grandly might have shown a little less severity, and thrown in a few details of interest without offence.” A Parisian critic wrote in 1884: “It was disturbing, mysterious, of a different colour from those we are accustomed to seeing. Also the canvas was scarcely covered, its grain almost invisible; the compatibility of the grey and the truly inky black was a joy to the eye, surprised by these unusual harmonies.”

More than a decade after the painting was first shown, the French government purchased it to be displayed at the Luxembourg Museum. Whistler was ecstatic about his vindication. He said, “Just think—to go and look at one’s own picture hanging on the walls of Luxembourg—remembering how it was treated in England—to be met everywhere with deference and treated with 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.” (December 1884) The honor of having his work displayed in such a prestigious institution helped the artist attract and secure wealthy American patrons and elevated his reputation in Europe as a bold, dynamic painter.

Who Was Whistler’s Mother?
Anna McNeill Whistler was a model woman according to the Victorian standards of her day: she was pious, submissive, and her life centered on domestic issues. She lived in three countries, witnessed the United States Civil War, often served as her son’s art agent and, later in life, was fascinated by the eclectic group of individuals that formed her son’s artistic circle.

She suffered great tragedy at an early age, losing her husband and three of her children to illness while the family lived in Russia. In 1863 she moved to London and lived on and off with James and her other children. She was very involved in James’s life, and was familiar with his fellow artists, students, patrons and collectors. She wrote that the: “artistic circle in which he is only too popular, is visionary and unreal tho so fascinating.”

As was customary for a woman of her social class, Anna Whistler kept in touch with her family and friends through letters. Today, her correspondence is used by historians seeking to understand the social issues of the day, and by art historians who find her descriptions of her son’s work and life an invaluable resource. Following is an excerpt from a letter to her sister where she discusses sitting for her portrait: “I was not as well then as I am now, but never distress Jemie [James] by complaints, so I stood bravely, two or three days, whenever he was in the mood for studying me as his pictures are studies, and I so interested stood as a statue! But realized it to be too great an effort, so my dear patient Artist who is gently patient as he is never wearying in his perseverance concluding to paint me sitting perfectly at my ease.”