A work made of drypoint with foul biting, with scraped and drypoint cancellation, in black ink on ivory laid paper.

Whistler's Mother

James McNeill Whistler · 1871

View at the AIC ↗

Palette

Oyster
50% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 12.3:1

Linen
19% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 13.6:1

Bone white
19% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 13.2:1

Pale stone
6% of the image
Grey · text contrast 11.4:1

Parchment
3% of the image
Gold & ochre · text contrast 12.5:1

Putty
3% of the image
Gold & ochre · text contrast 9.9:1

Colours measured by this site from the museum image (k-means in CIELAB). Names are the nearest in our own list and describe how the colour looks, not the pigment. Text on each chip uses whichever of black or white contrasts more (WCAG ratio shown). How

Details

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
American, 1834-1903
Date: 1871
Type: Print
Medium: Drypoint with foul biting, with scraped and drypoint cancellation, in black ink on ivory laid paper
Size: Plate: 25.3 × 15.5 cm (10 × 6 1/8 in.); Sheet, sight, bound: 37.7 × 24.1 cm (14 7/8 × 9 1/2 in.)
Place: United States
Period: 19th century
Themes: Mothers and children · Reading and letters
Main colour: White & cream · lightness 84, colourfulness 9

Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Walter S. Brewster. Museum record. Public domain: the museum's is_public_domain field read true when we last checked (2026-10-25); image released under CC0. Licence rules