# Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler (1871)

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- **Painting:** Whistler's Mother
- **Artist:** James McNeill Whistler
- **Date:** 1871
- **Medium:** Oil on canvas
- **Dimensions:** 144.3 × 163 cm (Musée d’Orsay record)
- **Current location:** Musée d’Orsay, Paris; RF 699
- **Period:** 19th-century Aesthetic Movement
- **Culture:** American artist working in London

Anna Whistler sits beside a patterned curtain, her white bonnet and handkerchief interrupting a field of grey and black. The picture can feel like a monument to motherhood, yet its formal title asks us to attend to relationships between shapes and tones. Her own letters reveal the practical decisions, affection and religious feeling behind that apparent stillness. Later exhibitions and a controversial postage stamp helped turn a private likeness into a public emblem.

## The story

Painted in Chelsea in 1871, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872, and acquired by the French state in 1891.

## Sources

- [s1] [Arrangement en gris et noir n°1: collection record](https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/arrangement-en-gris-et-noir-ndeg1-974), Musée d’Orsay (museum)
- [s2] [James McNeill Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies: The Red Rag and collected criticism](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24650/pg24650-images.html), James McNeill Whistler; digital edition by Project Gutenberg (archive)
- [s3] [Anna Matilda Whistler to Catherine Jane Palmer, 3–4 November 1871; document 10071](https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/recno/display/?cid=10071), University of Glasgow, Whistler correspondence project; original in Library of Congress (archive)
- [s4] [Anna Matilda Whistler to James H. Gamble, 10–20 April 1872; document 06549](https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/recno/display/?cid=06549), University of Glasgow, Whistler correspondence project; original at Glasgow University Library (archive)
- [s5] [Whistler catalogue YMSM 101: technical description and conservation](https://whistlerpaintings.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/display/?mid=y101&xml=tec), University of Glasgow (academic)
- [s6] [Algernon Graves to James McNeill Whistler, 9 September 1878; document 01797](https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/recno/display/?cid=01797), University of Glasgow, Whistler correspondence project; original at Glasgow University Library (archive)
- [s7] [Mothers of America Issue](https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-us-stamps-bureau-period-1894-1939-commemorative-issues-1934-1935/mothers-of-america), Smithsonian National Postal Museum (museum)
- [s8] [Whistler’s Mother arrives in New York: press release and Barr letter, May 1934](https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/174/releases/MOMA_1933-34_0041.pdf), Museum of Modern Art Archives (archive)
- [s9] [Whistler’s Mother: high-resolution image record](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Whistlers_Mother_high_res.jpg), Wikimedia Commons; reproduction credited to Musée d’Orsay (image-record)
- [s10] [Anna Matilda Whistler: biographical record](https://whistlerpaintings.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/biog/?mid=y101&nid=WhisAM&xml=sub), University of Glasgow (academic)
- [s11] [Norton Simon and Musée d’Orsay collection exchange: exhibition announcement](https://www.nortonsimon.org/assets/Uploads/Norton-Simon-and-Orsay-ExchangePress-Release.pdf), Norton Simon Museum and Musée d’Orsay (museum)

Editorial review date: 2026-10-01.

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