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"Whistler's Mother" and Its Impact

Popularly known as "Whistler's Mother," Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother may seem overly familiar today, but in its time it appeared radically original: spare, unsentimental, and perfectly poised. Whistler's novel presentation of his mother was immediately seized upon by American artists. Whistler himself insisted that the sitter's identity was incidental to the painting's aesthetic purpose; when the figure is imagined away, it becomes a largely abstract arrangement of rectangles.

In his own Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Henry Ossawa Tanner adopts many of the elements of Whistler's earlier painting including the shallow space, limited palette, and seated pose of Mrs. Tanner. Tanner would have first seen Whistler's Mother when it was displayed in 1881 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts – where Tanner was a student at the time.

James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1871, oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Photo: J.G. Berizzi. Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.

	Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Henry Ossawa Tanner, American (active France), 1859–1937. 1897, Oil on canvas. Unframed: 29 1/4 x 39 1/2 inches (74.3 x 100.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art: Partial gift of Dr. Rae Alexander-Minter and purchased with the W.P. Wilstach Fund, the George W. Elkins Fund, the Edward and Althea Budd Fund, and with funds contributed by the Dietrich Foundation, 1993

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