Some 150 works of art by James McNeill Whistler go on display in London this summer, in what will be the largest European retrospective of the American artist in 30 years.
Most will be familiar with at least one of Whistler’s works. Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (aka Portrait of the Artist’s Mother/Whistler’s Mother) gained mainstream notoriety thanks to its appearance in the 1997 movie Bean, and will be one of the major draws of Tate Britain’s James McNeill Whistler exhibition — which promises to be one of the big ticket London exhibitions of 2026.
The painting — on loan from Paris — will joined at the hotly-anticipated exhibition (21 May–27 September 2026) by pieces ranging from Whistler’s earliest notebooks, to self-portraits and large canvases like the sweeping The Coast of Brittany.
For Londoners, perhaps the most eye-catching works will be Whistler’s soupy depictions of the industrialised Thames and its surrounds; smoggy set pieces in which after-dark London is punctuated by street lights, factories and fireworks fizzing over pleasure gardens.
Tate promises to ‘offer a fresh perspective’ on how Whistler created such paintings, and in doing so, provoked bitter arguments among artists, patrons and critics who weren’t primed for such inventiveness. Indeed, Whistler wound up bringing a libel case against the critic John Ruskin after he suggested Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket, was tantamount to “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. Though he won the case, Whistler’s reputation was left in tatters; his finances depleted. He decided to sack off London, and venture to Venice instead.
James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, 21 May–27 September 2026
