Courtesy of Pratt Institute
Fig. 43. St. Agnes and Her Lamb. Andrea del Sarto. Pisa Cathedral, Italy
WHISTLER'S MOTHER
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
he story about Whistler and his mother is rather a sad one. He went to Europe when he was a young painter and told his mother as he started that he would come home to her when he had made a success. But he never made a success in money. He painted this picture of his mother and for twenty years tried to sell it. He offered it to his own country—the United States—for five hundred dollars. We were so stupid that we did not know that the picture was a masterpiece and that no amount of money could buy it later on. But the people of Paris began to feel that Whistler, the American artist, was a great master, and the city bought the picture, "Whistler's Mother." Of course we can never own the picture now, although it is an American mother, unless the French people should give it to us. But we do not deserve it, do we?
After a number of years Whistler's mother went to Europe to make a home for her wonderful son. She died in Chelsea, and to-day the mother and son are side by side in the little churchyard of Chiswick, near London.