Panayiotis Kalorkoti says about this work:

"In Whistler the background of green dadoed wall embellished with a butterfly signature suggests the artist's self-appointed role as arbiter of aesthetic taste, while the pendentive lights belong to the Peacock Room he decorated (notably without permission) for his patron Leyland. It is impossible to find a visual equivalent for Whistler's acerbic wit, but the portraits of Ruskin, Rossetti and Wilde on the wall hint at his intellectual ambiance, and at the taste of the time for bringing matters of morals and aesthetics to trial. I have not attempted to reproduce Whistler's consciously exquisite effects of colour, so none of his own works appear, but the figure of his mother from his best-known portrait now sits in frozen Victorian rectitude in the same room where her son gives his quizzical contemplation to the hint of a mistress."

Text supplied by the Artist