The stamp itself commemorated the 20th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson's proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.

Design of the stamp shows the painting popularly known as "Whistler's Mother," a world symbol of motherhood. The painter, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, called the picture An Arrangement in Grey and Black. While his father was building the Moscow-Saint Petersburg railroad, Whistler studied art at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg. He spent three years at the U.S. Military Academy and several months making maps for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, before going to Paris in 1855 to study painting. Whistler produced works now hanging in the major museums of the world.