Revealing the woman behind the mother of all portraits

whistler's mother: An American icon Edited by margaret f MacDonald(Lund humphries, (pounds) 16.95)

IF proof was ever needed of the American penchant for motherhood (and apple pie), it abounds in the story of James McNeill Whistler's iconic painting, Arrangement In Grey And Black No 1: Portrait Of The Painter's Mother. Although scholars consider it a major milestone in the development of the modernist aesthetic, a snowballing PR campaign during the painting's tour in the States in the 1930s succeeded in rebranding the image as the quintessential symbol of American motherhood.

The painting is currently on another rare outing from its Paris home, at the Hunterian in Glasgow, as part of the Whistler centenary celebrations (where it could be argued that the artist is now being rebranded, this time as a true Scot). To coincide with the exhibition, Margaret F MacDonald, of The Centre for Whistler Studies, has edited a scholarly book devoted to the portrait and its subject. Six liberally illustrated chapters, written by art historians from Britain and America, chart the successes of Whistler's mother, the woman, and Whistler's Mother, the painting.

The American-born granddaughter of a Kintyre man, Anna McNeill married railroad engineer George Washington Whistler when she was 27, inheriting three stepchildren and producing another five of her own. The family spent six affluent years in St Petersburg, ending in George's death from cholera in 1849. The young widow returned to the US until 1863, when she followed her artist son to London. Anna was deeply religious and wore mourning garb for the last 32 years of her life.

Whistler's career reached an impasse during the late 1860s, as he was desperately striving to make his artistic breakthrough. It was when a model failed to appear one day in 1871 that he decided to paint his mother, standing up. Anna valiantly stood for three days, but then admitted defeat, and over the next three months the seated portrait took shape. MacDonald examines the colours Whistler used, the brush sizes, the canvas and his technique. She reveals the changes the artist made to the composition and studies the clothes Anna Whistler was wearing, assembled to convey "a sort of conspicuous modesty".

The painting's history over the next two decades was chequered; it escaped rejection from the Royal Academy by a hair's breadth, was very nearly burned in a fire, and was almost seized by creditors in 1874. It was used several times as security for loans, and was declared as one of Whistler's assets during bankruptcy proceedings in 1879. It was not until 1888 that he could claim complete ownership again, and in 1891, after concerted lobbying, the painting was bought by France.

The second half of the book builds on this mountain of information with a more lateral approach. In the most readable of the essays, Kevin Sharp, of the Norton Museum of Art in Florida, tells the story of the painting's historic tour of America in 1932-34.

It was the first painting ever to be lent abroad by the Louvre and the loan was largely dependent on the delicate state of international relations at the time. Huge media hype made the painting into "an American holy icon", allowing "motherhood to trump modernism", by promoting the maternal theme at the expense of the painting's crucial formal qualities. During the painting's stay at the World's Fair in Chicago, "no mother-loving event was too absurd for Fair organisers to promote or too trivial for Chicago journalists to describe in earnest detail." The press also took an increasing interest in security arrangements to the extent that by the end of the tour gallery attendants were being issued with rifles.

Despite the protestations of Sharp (and Whistler himself) against the promotion of motherhood as the painting's primary concern, Professor William Vaughan of Birbeck College, University of London, seems to have succumbed. His essay explores the relationship between artists and their mothers from Albrecht Durer to Tracey Emin, with frequent reference to Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Vaughan's essay sits uneasily after Sharp's, and it conveys the impression of unresolved work in progress.

Rounding off the book with a plethora of cartoons, advertisements, greetings cards, and modern art, is Martha Tedeschi's survey of Whistler's mother in popular culture. Perhaps most insightfully of all, she draws comparisons between Whistler's composition and formal studio photographs of the time. "The portrait's visual connection to family photographs," she says, "was largely responsible for the rapidity with which the picture became accepted as an archetype of motherhood."

MacDonald's collection of essays is neither an academic tome nor a coffee-table book. On the one hand it is a valuable reference, painstakingly plotting the detail of Anna Whistler's life and irritatingly full of French quotes whose translations are buried in the end notes, but on the other it is beautifully illustrated, unencumbered with jargon, and imaginative in its approach.

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