Happy Mothering Day - Celebrating the Nurturing Spirit in Us All

Ebo People, Queen Mother Mask Pendant: Iyoba, 16th century, Benin

Metropolitan Museum of Art (to honor the mother of King/Oba Esigie, Idia)

Ancient Egyptian, Queen Hatshepsut, 1479-1459 BC, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty

Metropolitan Museum of Art  (First female pharaoh, stepmother of Thutmose III) 

Happy Mothering Day - 

Honoring our mothers, aunts, cousins, and friends;

the nurturing spirit within ourselves;

and our Mother Earth

Celebrate royally!

Love and hugs,

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange

Mother's Day Greetings 2020

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

www.nyarts-exchange.com

Portraits of Artists' Mothers

Mary Cassatt, Reading the Figaro (Portrait of the Artist's Mother), 1878

Katherine Kelson Johnston

Louisine Havermeyer wrote in her memoirs Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector (Ursus Press, 1993): "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt's mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that [Mary] inherited her ability."

Here are other artists' mothers who have gave us their talents through their children:

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1  

(The Artist's Mother), 1871

Anna McNeill

Paul Cézanne, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1867

Anne Elisabeth Honorine Aubert

Berthe Morisot, Portrait of the Artist's Mother and Sister, 1869-70

 Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie Thomas

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1896

Marie Picasso y Lopez

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1897

Anna Tanner

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926-36

Gorky's mother died of starvation in 1919 

The portrait is based on a 1912 photo

Happy Mother's Day,

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director, New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com