This is the most insightful exhibition into an artist that is both well-known and one that flies somewhat under the radar. I’ve always thought James Abbot McNeill Whistler ought to be more widely known that he currently is. Whenever I visit Paris, I always make a stop at the Musee D’Orsay to see one painting mostly, Whistler’s Mother. I love this painting. I am obsessed with this painting for the simple reason that it captures that particular love between a mother and her son. Madam Whistler looks haughty and impatient and irritated about being made to sit down there for her son to paint, yet in all that is an undeniable softness to her, the white against the greys and blacks, the softness in her outline, the slight curve at the back again the chair. Her legs perched on the platform. There is something about this that conveys a love between a mother and son in that usual and unconditional way; it encapsulates all of it and I find this, for all her grey, most enchanting. We are drawn to her. It is why I spend at least an hour in her presence before moving on. The D’orsay is an incredible museum all round that one must visit. Thus, this retrospective in London, is a long time coming.
By all accounts Whistler was both a rake and a mama’s boy, he was the darling of London society and a scandalous new addition to the artistic set. He had this knack of straddling a dual vision of the sorts; his paintings as arrangements of colours set to symphonies of music. The drollest of colours which he uses in the painting of both his mother and imitates in the Nocturne series that feels like a haunted movie and on the other hand he is painting friends on the decks of Wapping, in such rich and vivid autumnal colours. In the deliberate arrangements he strays away from the mood of his day, from what his peers are doing. He paints in such sombre moods capturing the elements, the cold, the dull, the calm of a sea at midnight. The exhaustion of a mother who has been asked to sit for hours to indulge her son’s whims. The sadness even of Heffernan his lover in the Little White Girl. He had a particular way of capturing human emotion to the point of it being raw and very real, the exhaustion comes through, the petulance and the emotion because he may have just told Heffernan she had to move out in that painting and chose to immortalise it. Who knows.
La Mere Gerard which he painted during his Parisian years is another painting that is deeply evocative of the human spirit and interaction because the subject is sceptical and inquisitive of you the viewer, her expression, thanks to the deftness of his brush strokes, is guarded, and in one stroke it tells the story of her life, whatever the viewer can gleam from it.
Then he moves to London and comes with his arrangements, besides the painting of his mother is that of lover Joanna Hiffernan, whom he scandalously lived with at the time. These series of paintings with her as the subject is a study in colour and layering which he curates as musical notes. Of the White Symphonies number 2 remains my favourite because of aforementioned assumptions but it is also the extraordinary detail of capturing her mirror image, the details of the little Japanese fan she holds and the sadness in her eyes. The Royal Academy rejected The White Girl, which was painted against the mantel of their Chelsea flat simply because they didn’t understand the narrative of the painting but it was a big hit at the Salon des Refusés.
One of the most fascinating things about James Whistler and perhaps a reason I admire him so, even love him, was his fight with art critic Ruskins who took issue with the artist’s style and avoidance of the traditional sense of a painter. When Whistler exhibited Nocturne Black and Gold at the Grosvenor Gallery, Ruskins, in his critics eye did not appreciate the abstraction of the painting, he thought Whistler had an overinflated ego as he accused him of flinging a pot of paint in the public’s eyes and calling it art. He wrote at the time in his publication;
“never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.
This review would prompt Whistler to bring a libelous suit against the critic, because it impugned his character and called to question his talent. Whistler won the case but only in judgment because he was awarded a throwaway sum but bringing the case against the critic would bankrupt him. Though it mightn’t have seemed a lot at the time or a win, it marks an important time in art history where an artist was not to be judged by the number of hours spent on a work but by the ideas that bring said works to life, their techniques, and originality because in so doing is the vision borne.
Going back to Whistler and his dear Mama. Upon her arrival in London following the civil war raging in America, Whistler decided to tone down on the debauchery of his lifestyle hence Jo had to go. Anna Whistler was deeply religious and her son as not going to bring her to disrepute with his lifestyle. Hence my interpretation of this painting remains indicative of that love between a mother and her child. Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler was raised in the antebellum south. Of her five children, only two survived into adulthood. Her husband George was a renowned engineer who moved his family to St. Petersburg, Russia and worked as chief engineer to the Tsar Nicholas but following his death six years later, the family moved back to America. In 1855, having flunked out of jobs and West Point, James moved to Paris where he became a rakish artist- a winning combination in my books. He made friends with other artists including Monet. In 1859, having tired of the adulations in Paris he moved to London. He worked tireless to develop a unique eye and perspective. One day in 1871 a model having failed to turn up in his studio he decides to paint his mother in her stead. The painting was meant to have a standing model, but age determined otherwise and it is the better for it. It took 4 weeks to paint, she sitting there, hands clasped in prayer, probably praying for patience too.
Whistler plays with a family of monotones; greys and the palest of blues, blacks, and dullest of whites. The dark curtain and the small picture on the wall though blend in, are present. It stands out amongst Whistler’s other works; in its simplicity it is emblematic of that sacred bond between a mother and her child. From the subtle flushes of her pink cheeks to the soft elevation of her foot on a stool to how her dress falls out of the painting almost, you wonder if the rest of it is tucked away behind it or if it’ll fall out of the golden frame which Whistler created for the painting
When whistler presented this to the Royal Academy to be exhibited, the rejected the painting, but their feelings, whatever they were was not shared by a public who lauded this painting as a symbol of the unseen struggles of motherhood, and a reticent dignity and quiet presence. It is truly a dignified painting. It would go on to be celebrated as it was exhibited throughout America during the era of the great depression. It resonated even more so with mothers; representing a hardship of a particular kind borne only by mothers as the painting itself is of a particular kind of love between a mother and her child. As I will always see it.
Whistlers is the Tate Britain until the 27th of September.