Mother and Child

Maker John Wood (British, 1801-1870)

Collections

British Paintings

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1840-1845

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas (diameter): 36 1/4 in. (92.1 cm.) frame: 42 3/4 × 42 1/4 × 3 1/4 in. (108.6 × 107.3 × 8.3 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Adele S. Browning Memorial Collection, gift of Mildred Browning Green and Honorable Lucius Peyton Green

Label TextThe identity of the sitters is unknown.

Although this painting almost certainly portrays a particular mother and child, Wood's idealized characterization lends itself to a more generalized reading. Privileging conventions of beauty over close, naturalistic observation, Wood has polished the flesh of his subjects to a uniform smoothness while heightening the rosy carnations of their cheeks and lips, and cosmetically enhancing their eyes. The exaggerated sweetness of the child is particularly striking. The radiant curls, bee-stung lips, and languishing eyes produce an appearance of glamour and sentimentality, calling to mind the children's portraits produced by Thomas Lawrence late in his career. Moreover, as in paintings by Lawrence, there is a suggestion of mild eroticism in the way the child is presented. Drapery is arranged strategically to reveal more flesh than it conceals, leaving bare the child's chest, arm, thighs, and legs. The loss of the sock and leather shoe on the child's proper left foot, together with its squirming posture and disordered dress, are elements calculated to strike the viewer as charmingly naturalistic. Yet the painting as a whole reflects the artificial tastes of the early to mid nineteenth century.
Depersonalized by Wood's idealizing treatment, the figures in this portrait are readily understood as universal types embodying the affection between Mother and Child. They specifically recall the Madonna and infant Jesus as represented in paintings of the Italian Renaissance. The round (tondo) format deliberately invokes associations with well-known Renaissance prototypes, such as Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola of c. 1515 (Palatine Gallery, Florence) and The Alba Madonna of c. 1511. Similarly, the interlocking pose of Wood's figures, with the doting mother gently restraining her restless child, echoes a gestural motif often found in paintings by Raphael and his circle. The same models informed Wood's own religious paintings, such as The Madonna and Child, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841.
Wood's allusions to venerated prototypes such as these raise the artistic pretensions of the painting, while also ennobling his sitters to iconic status. It is an example of portraiture as apotheosis. Additionally, the artist's generic approach is effective in expanding the painting's potential audience beyond those acquainted with the specific woman and child represented. Indeed, the engraving that G.H. Phillips made after this painting in 1845 was published under the generic title The Young Mother. Although Wood's generalizing tendency rarely occurs in his portraits of men (in which physical appearance is documented in a more straightforward manner), his images of women and children often blur the distinctions between the various types of painting that he practiced--portraiture, genre subjects, and religious paintings. His instinctive projection of literary and spiritual elements onto his female and infant subjects reflects the idealization of women and children that characterized British popular culture during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Status

Not on view

Object number78.20.39