When his 15-year-old model did a runner, Whistler’s mother stepped in. As the triumphant result arrives in Britain, the work’s restorer writes about its creator’s brilliance – while wishing he’d used better paint
‘One does like to make one’s mummy just as nice as possible.” So James Abbott McNeill Whistler said about his triumphant painting of his mother Anna – or Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 as he christened it. Whistler was not a man given to undue modesty, but in 2026 his words sound like a rare understatement. Over the past century and a half, Whistler’s Mother, as it is commonly known, has become America’s equivalent of the Mona Lisa. Anna has never stopped travelling around museums in the US and beyond in those years. This month, for the first time in almost two generations, it will return to London, the city where Anna was painted in Whistler’s Chelsea studio, as part of Tate Britain’s Whistler show.
I got to know every inch of the picture over many months, as I restored it for the Musée d’Orsay to the state it is in now (I was commissioned by the Louvre, the owner of the painting). Whistler is the only artist whose portrait of his mother has reached such superstar status – and its history is fascinating.
