In 1871, James McNeill Whistler painted what would become his most famous work, which he titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black" and submitted the following year to the Royal Academy of Art in London for its 104th Exhibition. Both members of the Royal Academy and the British public were unhappy with the work - the Academy came close to rejecting the painting and the public was uneasy with a portrait described solely as an "arrangement" of colors, wanting more of an explanatory title. As a result, Whistler appended the words "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" to the "Arrangement" title just for this exhibition, although that name stuck and the painting has come down to us by the more popular "Whistler's Mother."
The abstract expressionists were fond of titles that didn't help viewers out much - the recent "Abstract Expressionist New York" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art included Ad Reinhardt's 1963 "Abstract Painting," for instance, or Richard Pousette-Dart's 1943 "Fugue Number 2" or Barnett Newman's 1946 "Untitled" or Mark Rothko's 1945-6 "Untitled" or Clyfford Still's 1944 "1944-N No. 2." - and the current retrospective of the work of Venezuelan painter Carlos Cruz-Diez at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts (through July 4th) is filled with works titled "Physichromie 113-8" and "Physichromie 174." If you have to ask, it's obvious you don't know.
For artists, the titles can be as personal as the artist. "It's like naming puppies," said painter Sondra Freckelton. "You see how they behave, and that's what you name them." African-American artist Whitfield Lovell's paintings are often fragments from jazz songs, which inspired them.
Giving a name to a work of art is, historically, a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is even more recent that artists provide the title. For instance, Giorgio Vasari, in his 1568 Lives of the Artists, makes reference to a variety of paintings and sculpture by their creators, subject matter, location and patrons, but the actual artworks have no separate names. Titles may not have been deemed necessary when biblical or mythological scenes were depicted - "Madonna and Child" or "The Resurrection" - that everyone knew, or when the work was a portrait: Leonardo da Vinci never referred "La Gioconda" or, as it better known in the English-speaking world, the "Mona Lisa."
No one actually knows when titles by artists became standard practice. It may be assumed that artists would begin furnishing their own titles when they started producing artwork independent of patrons or sold by art dealers, a situation that developed in 17th century Holland. However, according to several European art curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there was basically no such thing as artists giving titles to their works in Holland at this time. Inventories gave descriptions of what the compiler saw, and the titles of secular works were usually generic (such as, still-life, merry company, landscape with figures). An exception is Vermeer's "The Art of Painting" that was so named by the artist's wife shortly after his death. Walter Liedtke, curator of European painting at the Met, noted that he ordered the change on the Rembrandt painting historically titled "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer" to "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer," "because Aristotle was clearly thinking about more than just this bust." He also noted not being completely convinced that the figure is Aristotle - it could be the 13th century Albertus Magnus or just "some philosopher" - but he is sticking with the conventional wisdom in that part.
Auction houses selling Old Masters list titles on the individual lots, but those titles tend to be descriptive and often based on what it was called the last time it was up at auction somewhere. Retitling makes tracking auction results much more difficult, even when the title is clearly wrong, so auctioneers tend to make no changes. (Chicago auctioneer Leslie Hindman recalled one work titled "Merry Company" when it was obviously the flight into Egypt of the holy family, "but it had gone so long with that title that it seemed more trouble than anything else to make a change.)
Some titles refer to the location of the piece (Van Eyck's "Ghent Altarpiece," for example) or are simply descriptive, such as Alfred Sisley's "Still Life: Apples and Grapes," which he painted in 1876, four years before Claude Monet painted his own "Still Life: Apples and Grapes." Neither artist ever recorded such a title in his letters or diaries, so it is unclear where these names came from; it is very likely that a dealer or collector provided the title.
