Whistlers Mother NGV
Exhibition Dates. 25 Mar - 19 June 2016
at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
The NGV has its own associations with Portrait of the artist’s mother before now unexplored. The Gallery holds a similar Goodwin chair on which the painting’s sitter Anna Whistler sits, plus an edition of the etching Black Lion Wharf 1859, which is depicted in the background of the famous painting. The exhibition also reveals the remarkable influence Whistler has had on some of Australia’s most prominent artists including John Longstaff, Tom Roberts, E. Phillips Fox and Hugh Ramsay.
The National Gallery of Victoria presents one of the most recognisable and iconic paintings in the world, the exceptional and historic Portrait of the artist’s mother 1871, painted by master artist James McNeill Whistler. This focused exhibition marks the first time that this large and imposing painting has travelled to Australia on loan from @museeorsay Paris.
Whistler collected both Japanese art and European works inspired by Japan. The curtain textile and ebonised chair in Portrait of the artist’s mother is European productions influenced by Japanese aesthetics, while the painting’s composition reflects Whistler interest in Japanese art and design.
In the late 1850s Whistler’s Thames etchings showed evidence of his growing interest in Japanese eighteenth-century woodblock prints, and by the early 1860s he had acquired his own collection of prints from a favoured shop in Paris.
The popularity of the work is also charted. From its grudging acceptance when first painted (its non-narrative qualities confronted tastes of the time), the painting became a household name when the thirty-second President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, was so taken with it that in 1934 he himself devised a design of it for a Mother’s Day stamp. The NGV has its own associations with Portrait of the artist’s mother before now unexplored. The Gallery holds a similar Goodwin chair on which the painting’s sitter Anna Whistler sits, plus an edition of the etching Black Lion Wharf 1859, which is depicted in the background of the famous painting. The exhibition also reveals the remarkable influence Whistler has had on some of Australia’s most prominent artists including John Longstaff, Tom Roberts, E. Phillips Fox and Hugh Ramsay. (text NGV)
Photographed by Nani P
