The Flickr Whistlersmother Image Generatr

"Whistler's Mother," officially titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1," is a renowned painting by James McNeill Whistler. This iconic work, which depicts the artist's mother, has become a symbol of motherhood and American art.

Although usually housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, it has made rare visits to the United States. In a significant event, the painting returned to Chicago for the first time in over 60 years, featured in an exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Musée d'Orsay

This us a better portrait of Sharona. Blythe dolls don't photograph well in strict profile.. Their heads look squashed.

My dear husband gave me a gift of several lovely musical instruments and a set of chairs to go with them. My plan has been to create individual sculptures to which I can add the head of lps petite Blythes. I finally came up with a reasonable armature out of 3mm craft wire and disassembled a few Polly Pocket dolls for moveable limbs.

Since I already had the beginnings of a seated model, I chose the James McNeil Whistler painting "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's mother," aka Whistler's Mother.

Of course there will always be issues with scale with Blythe dolls because of the big heads, but in this case I had another issue to contend with as Whistler himself took liberties with his mother's proportions. One critic suggested that she would have to be built like an NBA player. I had to give my model a leg extension to give me the lap I needed. A pair of Polly Pocket boots are mounted to the free standing foot stool.

I wasn't too worried about fabric or sewing as this was going to be a temporary setup. The music room dolls will have nice black skirts with shiny green tops. For this doll I used a black knee high compression stocking and did more sculpting than sewing. I had a nice selection of lace to play with but the shape of her head and hair were a bit awkward.

The biggest problem was that my armature had not allowed for any neck room, a problem that will need to be addressed for the musicians. I didn't have time to do any major adjusting and worked with what I had. The same with my other materials.

The drapes were fun. I used a piece of tissue from a floral bouquet and pleated it. After pleating and figuring out what would be needed, I opened it up and did some freehand designs with metallic paint pens using his painting as a guide. Once I let the pleats fall back into place everything hung nicely.

The most fun part of the project was reading about Whistler. He was quite a character and like many artists, quite full of himself. One quote from Oscar Wilde said, “Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and I believe still spells it, with a capital ‘I,'”

When Whistler was asked why he had been born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he replied that he wanted to be close to his mother. :)

You may not be able to see Whistler's ubiquitous signature butterfly with a stinger in the top right corner of his curtains. I decided to add my cryptic signature by spelling my name backwards in the painting on the wall.

He named most of his paintings with musical notation, so I have followed suit by naming my portrait Impromptu Study of Scale in the Style of James Abbott McNeill Whistler

In order to get the right light I inverted one nesting table on top of another.

This public domain photo is from this Wikipedia article and is used for reference. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler%27s_Mother

Perhaps better known as ‘Whistler’s Mother’, this famous and now revered (and sometimes parodied) portrait caused controversy in English art circles when it was unveiled. Whistler himself did not refrain from from provoking the stuffy contemporary English art world, which viewed him as an intolerably brash and arrogant American.

Portrayed without an iota of the sentimentality that was the Victorian mode for maternal depictions, Anna McNeil Whistler (1804-1881) was aged 67 at the time of the painting. Echoing Queen Victoria, she wears widow’s weeds: her husband, a railroad engineer, had succumbed to cholera in 1849 in St. Petersburg, Russia. She was a native of North Carolina. In addition to James, her younger son was William, who despite his New England birth committed himself to the Confederate cause as an army surgeon during The American Civil War. This split in family loyalties prompted Anna Whistler’s move to England during 1863, where she joined her son James, and was seemingly astonished by his bohemian ways, although she did not condemn them. She later relocated to Hastings, Sussex, where she is interred.

James McNeil Whistler

This Historic Markers stands near Wilmington's First Presbyterian Church. It stands near where Anna Whistler home once stood. Anna Whistler was the Mother of artist James Whistler and was the subject of the painted called "Whistler's Mother."

2/100 - Copy cats
I'm not completely happy with this but I couldn't get the camera at the distance I wanted. In the end it was balanced on a box, on a table which itself was on the sofa, next to the dog.
The camera kept unsynching from the phone app, and everytime I got up I had to re arrange the clothing.
After much faffing I simply CBA'd to go and change the lens.
Minimal PS'ing and LR because I have lost the will to live.
( I was going to have flower patterns on the 'curtain' and put some pictures on the wall, I may come back to it at some point and replace it, but i suspect not!)
week 1 theme - Close to Home
A is for Art (again)
Different snap for WAH today

Found in Cluttered Attic - Whistler's Father.

Whistler's father.