This episode worsened the rift between Whistler and the British art world; Arrangement was the last painting he submitted for the academy's approval (although his etching of Old Putney Bridge was exhibited there in 1879).

VIII of The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (by Algernon Graves, F.S.A., London 1906) lists the 1872 exhibit as no.

941, "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's mother", and gives Whistler's address as The White House, Chelsea Embankment.

After Thomas Carlyle viewed the painting, he agreed to sit for a similar composition, this one titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.

In December 1884, Whistler wrote:[citation needed] Just think—to go and look at one's own picture hanging on the walls of Luxembourg—remembering how it had been treated in England—to be met everywhere with deference and respect...and to know that all this is ... a tremendous slap in the face to the Academy and the rest!

In his 1890 book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he wrote:[12] Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an "Arrangement in Grey and Black."

[14] In summing up the painting's influence, art historian Martha Tedeschi has stated: Whistler's Mother, Wood's American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer.

These include films such as Sing and Like It (1934), the Donald Duck shorts Early to Bed (1941) & Donald's Diary (1954), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Babette's Feast (1986),[22] The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), Bean (1997), The Tigger Movie (2000), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), I Am Legend (2007), and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013).

Actor Hurd Hatfield toured internationally several times with the play Son of Whistler's Mother by playwright Maggie Williams.

In 1894, Debussy wrote to violinist Eugène Ysaÿe describing his Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one color – what a study in grey would be in painting."

Whether Debussy used the term color to refer to orchestration or harmony, critics have observed "shades" of a particular sound quality in his music.