Whistler's mother was the subject of the famous painting, while his father went down in obscurity. James S. Robbins fills us in on this unknown man:
In 1842, George Whistler accepted an invitation from Russian Tsar Nicholas I to build a railroad between St. Petersburg and Moscow, and moved his family to Russia. The project presented an engineering challenge since the Tsar had decreed that the railroad run in a perfectly straight line between the two cities. Legend has it that he placed a ruler on a map and drew the line himself. However, his thumb bumped the pencil, causing a slight jog in the line, which planners faithfully recreated rather than dare question the Tsar’s hand-drawn route. The work was difficult, mostly because of the intrigues and jealousies of the Russian Court, which Whistler was ill-disposed and ill-equipped to handle. He remained steadfastly American in spirit, refusing to address the Tsar as “your majesty” and refusing a high ranking commission in the Russian army. He labored on for seven years under difficult conditions, finally succumbing to cholera in St. Petersburg in 1849, two years before the project was finished. When the railroad was finally completed by lesser hands, the first two trains to travel it collided head-on.
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