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Anna Matilda (née McNeill) Whistler (September 27, 1804 – January 31, 1881 [1]) was the mother of American-born, British-based painter James McNeill Whistler, who made her the subject of his famous painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, often titled Whistler's Mother. [2]
- Womanhood
- Born of Two Worlds
- On The Move
- In London, A Masterpiece Emerges
Anna Matilda (McNeill) Whistler (1804–1881) may have been a quiet, diminutive woman, but she was a mighty force in the lives of those around her. She reared a renowned artist, an acclaimed physician, a prosperous businessman and a daughter who married into the English upper class. A shrewd observer of the world, Anna encountered and interacted with...
But there were complicated layers to her character and upbringing. In a way, Anna was a daughter of the slave-holding South. She spent the first years of her life in North Carolina, where she was raised by a physician father and a beautiful, cultured mother. Both a plantation-owning uncle and Anna’s brother had children with black women. In the cas...
Thirteen years into her marriage, and after living in another four homes in three states, she packed up her family and moved to St Petersburg, Russia. Her world-renowned engineer husband had been hired by Czar Nicholas I to build a railroad from St Petersburg to Moscow. Six years later, when her husband died of cholera, Anna returned to America to ...
Quickly adapting to yet another upheaval, Anna directed her artist son’s London household, where she lived for most of the next 11 years. It was during this time that, in 1871, she sat for her famous portrait. Whistler had experienced one of his periodic bouts of self-doubt in the last half of the 1860s. Reconsidering the purpose of art, he experim...
Aug 24, 2015 · Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, who lived with her son, in London, from 1864 to 1875, sits in profile with an air of infinite patience, gazing steadily at, apparently, nothing. The work is on loan ...
- Peter Schjeldahl
- IT WAS PAINTED ON A WHIM. In 1871, the Massachusetts-born painter had received a commission from a Member of Parliament to paint his daughter, Maggie Graham.
- WHISTLER’S MOTHER ORIGINALLY STOOD. Standing still for long stretches proved difficult for the aging lady, and she later wrote to her sister, "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!
- IT’S BIGGER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK. Measuring in at 56.8 inches by 64.2 inches, Whistler's mother is almost life-size within the frame.
- WHISTLER DIDN’T CALL THE PIECE WHISTLER’S MOTHER. Following in a theme of naming his paintings like musical compositions, Whistler dubbed this portrait Arrangement in Grey and Black - Portrait of the Painter’s Mother.
Whistler's Mother. Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother or Portrait of Artist's Mother, [1][2] is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871. The subject of the painting is Whistler's mother, Anna McNeill Whistler.
May 12, 2024 · Anna Matilda McNeill (1804–1881) grew up in North Carolina. At twenty-seven she married a friend of her father, widower and retired army officer, George Washington Whistler, who already had three children. Anna McNeill Whistler gave birth to five children, of whom only two survived into adulthood.
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About Whistler’s Mother. Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, c. 1850–59. Anna Matilda McNeill was born in 1804 in Wilmington, North Carolina. She married railroad engineer George Washington Whistler, a friend of her brother, in 1831. Mr. Whistler’s first wife had passed away, leaving three children. Anna and George had five more children ...
