Bring Us the Bobblehead of James McNeill Whistler!

James McNeill Whistler – creator of the iconic painting nicknamed "Whistler's Mother"* - is getting his very own bobblehead.

Lowell's minor-league baseball team, the Spinners, is honoring the painter, who was from their home base, by giving away the bobbleheads tonight during their game against the Oneonta Tigers. The first 1,500 people to make it to LeLacheur Park will get a free bobblehead, and a woman will portray Whistler's Mother, watching the game from her rocking chair.

We don't know how Whistler would feel about having a bobblehead produced in his honor. He was known to be somewhat pugnacious and even took critic John Ruskin to court for libel in 1878 because Ruskin said that one of Whistler's paintings (not the one of his momma) "flung a pot of paint in the public's face."

But Whistler's dead, and the Spinners are free to produce a bobblehead. And Bostonist loves the thought of famous-artist bobbleheads. Is there a collection? Do you think they have one for Warhol?

*For you trivia freaks, the real name is "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother." And Lowell has also given homeboy Jack Kerouac the same treatment.

Image of the James McNeill Whistler bobblehead courtesy of the Lowell Spinners.