Whistler's Mother
James McNeill Whistler's 1871 portrait of his mother sitting stiffly in profile against a gray wall — the canonical image of stern, patient maternal disapproval.
Origin
Whistler titled it Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother — the original sitter, a model, failed to show up, so he asked his elderly mother to pose. She is in black, sitting bolt upright on a wooden chair, looking right with no expression. France bought it in 1891, making him the first American artist with a painting in a major French national collection. Now in the Musée d'Orsay.
Modern usage
Endlessly parodied — Mr. Bean famously stole it in Bean (1997). 'Looking like Whistler's mother' means stiff, disapproving, patient in a slightly chilling way. The phrase 'whistling Whistler's mother' is a tongue-twister mainly because of the painting's fame.
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