Mum for Mistress

March 22, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART | 0 Comments |

Whistler said of his mother’s visit: “All of a sudden in the middle of the affair my mother [Anna] arrived from the United States!  General upheaval!….I had to empty my house and purify it from cellar to attic...”*  Looking at the picture, perhaps we can understand the artist’s anxiety about this model of rectitude.  Incidentally, she made Whistler promise to never paint on a Sunday.

The wonderful Musée d’Orsay has lent Whistler’s famous Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 to the National Gallery of Victoria, as it is staging an exhibition of Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) and despite its vast stock of impressionist and post-impressionist work, did not have this fine work of his, Siesta, which NGV had cannily snapped up.  TVC regrets to announce that la belle Francais did us in this deal.

bonnard

 

 

 

 

[*Gordon Fleming, The Young Whistler (1978), p. 194.]

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