Pyeongye
01Where you've seen it
In 1934 the United States issued a stamp to honor Mother's Day, and it featured Whistler's painting of his mother. The painting also stars in the 1997 movie Bean. It arrives at an American museum, Mr. Bean accidentally ruins it, and he secretly swaps in a poster.
Everyone calls it Whistler's Mother, but the title he gave it is Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1. He painted his mother and named the picture after its colors.
02The real story
Whistler liked to give his paintings musical titles. Arrangement, Symphony, and Nocturne, a night song. Pyeongye has one of those, Nocturne: Blue and Gold, Southampton Water, painted in 1872. On gray-blue water float a single golden moon and a few faint shadows of boats.
Night paintings like this one landed him in court. The critic John Ruskin wrote that one of his nocturnes was like flinging a pot of paint in the public's face, and Whistler sued him for libel. He won at the 1878 trial, but the damages came to one farthing, a tiny coin.