Which painting is titled Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 in the 1997 film Bean?

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Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 is the painting known as Whistler’s Mother in the 1997 film Bean.

James McNeill Whistler painted the work in 1871. Its formal title describes the arrangement of colours and composition, while the familiar nickname refers to the sitter, Whistler’s mother, Anna McNeill Whistler.

In Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, the painting is sent from the National Gallery in London to Los Angeles. Mr. Bean is assigned to the American presentation despite having little understanding of art, and his involvement leads to the film’s central visual catastrophe.

The work is often identified simply as Whistler’s Mother, but that is a nickname rather than the formal title. It is also not the same painting as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, another famous portrait frequently associated with museum comedies and art-history questions.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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