Art: New Look at Mummy

“One does like to make one’s Mummy just as nice as possible.” said James McNeill Whistler after he finished his most famous painting. Whistler’s dignified, peaceful portrait of his mother, which he called Arrangement in Grey and Black, was nice enough to gain it lasting world esteem, make it the best-known painting by an American. But most Americans have never seen it in the original.

Part of the reason goes back to the lack of enthusiasm with which the picture was greeted in its early years. Whistler packed it off to the 1872 show of the Royal Academy in London, where the Academicians promptly consigned it to the cellar, “down among the dead men.” until one committeeman persuaded his reluctant colleagues that it deserved a showing. When Whistler got his Mother back, he pawned it (along with three other paintings) in 1878, then found that he could not do without his Mummy, and redeemed her for £50. In the early 1880s the picture was exhibited in Philadelphia and New York, offered for sale at $1,000. There were no takers. Then in 1891 the French government, apologizing to the artist for the paltry price, bought the Mother for 4,000 francs ($772), and hung it in the Luxembourg Museum.

Since then, Arrangement has been the property of the French government. It was shown once in America, from 1932 to 1934. when it was lent to the Museum of Modern Art, and, insured for half a million dollars, taken on a U.S.-wide tour. Otherwise, Whistler’s compatriots have seen the painting only in reproduction or on visits to an annex of the Louvre, to which it was moved in 1926. At the outbreak of World War II. the Mother was cached in the country for safekeeping. After Paris was liberated in 1944 the painting was returned to the Louvre, where it was put into storage.

Last week the portrait was on public view again for the first time in 14 years. The village of Blérancourt, 67 miles northeast of Paris, staged a special show in its Musée de la Coopération Franco-Américaine, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Whistler’s death on July 17, 1903, and the Louvre lent the painting for exhibition until this fall. After that. Whistler’s famous parent, sitting so gravely and so quietly in her golden frame, will probably be shipped to the U.S.. so that Americans can have another look at the most popular of all American paintings.