The Other Whistler Gets His Comeuppance at the Tate

In Viva Voce, a single video at Tate Britain, Whistler’s head is paraded on a spike, figuratively. No, not James McNeil Whistler, whom the Brits claim for themselves but who always thought of himself as an American. I mean the other Whistler. That’s Rex Whistler (1905–1944), the high-society portraitist, muralist, costume designer, and Bright Young Thing.

Long years after he died a hero, a Welsh Guard fighting in Normandy, Whistler is in the crosshairs over a 55-foot-long mural he painted in 1927 for what was then the Tate’s elegant museum restaurant. It’s got three tiny passages that everyone now acknowledges are racist. Two depict a black child kidnapped by Bright Young Things and enslaved while one shows his mother, screaming in protest from a tree and looking like a monkey. The black figures are about four inches tall.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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In Viva Voce, a single video at Tate Britain, Whistler’s head is paraded on a spike, figuratively. No, not James McNeil Whistler, whom the Brits claim for themselves but who always thought of himself as an American. I mean the other Whistler. That’s Rex Whistler (1905–1944), the high-society portraitist, muralist, costume designer, and Bright Young Thing.

Long years after he died a hero, a Welsh Guard fighting in Normandy, Whistler is in the crosshairs over a 55-foot-long mural he painted in 1927 for what was then the Tate’s elegant museum restaurant. It’s got three tiny passages that everyone now acknowledges are racist. Two depict a black child kidnapped by Bright Young Things and enslaved while one shows his mother, screaming in protest from a tree and looking like a monkey. The black figures are about four inches tall.