Painted by James McNeill Whistler in London in 1871, this portrait of his mother Anna Matilda McNeill was exhibited under the title 'Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1' — a statement that formal harmony, not sitter psychology, was the picture's subject. Black dress, grey wall, and rectilinear curtain form a rigorous horizontal–vertical grid that distils Whistler's aesthetic pursuit of 'art for art's sake'. In 1891 it became the first work by an American artist to enter the French national collections.

Exhibition Venue

Musée d'Orsay

Paris, France