Arrangement en gris et noir no 2 : Portrait de Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle, the fierce Scottish historian, called on Whistler after seeing the portrait of the artist's mother in his studio, the picture the world now just calls Whistler's Mother. Carlyle wanted the same treatment, and he got it: the same plain profile, the same grey wall, a dark coat against it, this time an old man of 78 settled into a chair. Whistler cared less about Carlyle the great thinker than about the arrangement of tones, which is why he titled it in the language of music, Arrangement in Grey and Black. In 1891 the city of Glasgow bought it, pushed by a group of young local painters, and it became the first Whistler to enter any public collection.