Dear Friends,
Well, we are all updating these days in order to shorten the great divide of social distancing. How are you doing today? I hope you take time to smell the roses, literally, since the sun came out and the winds feel gentler than yesterday. Did you walk in the snow showers? I got caught in a gust while noticing that our neighbors' roses were starting to bloom What a contrast! What a weird time we are living through these days.
James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1:
Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1871
Mama Whistler is now in confinement with her artwork buddies inside the shuttered Musée d'Orsay. (Did you know the painting lives in Paris? However, Mrs. Whistler posed in London while living with her son. She was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and married her brother's friend George Washington Whistler, a widower with three children, in 1831. She had 5 sons, but only 2 survived beyond childhood. Her most famous offspring was the flamboyant James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who added his mother's maiden name to his own after she died in 1881.)
And here is a portrait photograph of the lady herself, better known as "Whistler's Mother":
Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, 1850s
Wishing you a joyous day - celebrating your Mom, remembering your Mom, or being a Mom -
just enjoy and smell those roses.
(BTW: I will Zoom "Mothers in Art" through Byram Shubert Library in Greenwich, CT, on May 21st, at 7 pm - invitations will be sent out at a later date.)
With hugs and love,
Beth
Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director and owner
New York Arts Exchange
