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Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother or Portrait of Artist's Mother, is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1871. The subject of the painting is Whistler's mother, Anna McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (1,443 mm × 1,624 mm),[3] displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design. It is held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris,[2] having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon and a Victorian Mona Lisa.
The painting has been featured or mentioned in numerous works of fiction and within pop culture. These include films such as Sing and Like It (1934), the Donald Duck short Donald's Diary (1954), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Babette's Feast (1986),[19] Bean (1997), I Am Legend (2007), and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013).
English rock musician John Lennon used a self-portrait modeled after the painting on the cover of his 1975 compilation album Shaved Fish.
It has been mentioned in television episodes of The Simpsons ("Rosebud",[20][21] "The Trouble with Trillions",[22][23] and "The Burns and the Bees"[citation needed]).
The painting is mentioned in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita.[24]
The painting is mentioned in part six of Don Delillo's novel Underworld.
In a four-part episode of the Underdog cartoon series (Parts 69-72 in the series) entitled "Whistler's Father", Underdog is assigned to stand guard in a museum to prevent the theft of a valuable painting called Whistler's Father.
The film The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) features the shape of the painting as a birthmark that is used to identify a character after he is replaced with an "evil double."
The painting is central to the plot of the comedy film Bean (1997), in which Mr. Bean accidentally defaces it during its repatriation to the United States and secretly replaces it with a poster.
The painting was featured in America's Next Top Model, Cycle 5 to inspire the photoshoots for Olay's Quench body lotion, in a modern interpretation of the classical artwork.
Fred Armisen's character Karl Cowperthwaite frequently mentions the painting in season 4 of the TV show Last Man on Earth.
Cole Porter’s Anything Goes lists the painting in the song "You're the Top".
Actor Hurd Hatfield toured internationally several times with the play Son of Whistler's Mother by playwright Maggie Williams.[25]
The movie Sneakers (1992) features two characters code-named Whistler and Mother, played by David Strathairn and Dan Ackroyd, respectively.[26]
Between 1959 and 2021, the Douglas A-26 Invader serial number 41-39401 was either flown or displayed with the name of Whistler's Mother. It featured a reproduction of the painting on the nose.
Whistler, and particularly this painting, had a profound effect on Claude Debussy, a contemporary French composer. In 1894, Debussy wrote to violinist Eugène Ysaÿe describing his Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one color – what a study in grey would be in painting." Whether Debussy used the term color to refer to orchestration or harmony, critics have observed "shades" of a particular sound quality in his music.