Mother and Child

1921

Pablo Picasso
Spanish, active France, 1881–1973

In 1917 Picasso traveled to Rome to design sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes. Deeply impressed by the ancient and Renaissance art of that city, he began painting monumental figures inspired by antiquity. His new classical style was influenced by the finely modeled odalisques of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and the late, oddly proportioned female nudes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Mother and Child was also inspired by Picasso’s own life. Just three years earlier he had married Russian dancer Olga Khokhlova, and in 1921 their son Paolo was born. Between 1921 and 1923 he produced at least twelve works on the subject of mothers and children, returning to a theme that he had explored during his Blue Period. But whereas those figures are frail and anguished, his classical-period figures, with their sculptural modeling and solidity, are majestic in proportion and feeling. Here an infant sits on the mother’s lap and reaches up to touch her. The woman, dressed in a Grecian gown, gazes intently at her child. Behind them stretches a simplified background of sand, water, and sky. Picasso’s treatment of the pair is not sentimental, but the relationship expresses a serenity and stability that characterized his own life at this time.

Status: On View, Gallery 394
Department: Modern Art

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Title: Mother and Child
Place: Spain (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1921
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: signed and dated l.r.: "Picasso / 21"
Dimensions: 142.9 × 172.7 cm (56 1/4 × 68 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Maymar Corporation, Mrs. Maurice L. Rothschild, and Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey McCormick; Mary and Leigh Block Fund; Ada Turnbull Hertle Endowment; through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin E. Hokin
Reference Number: 1954.270
Copyright: © 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The Dial LXXIV (March 1923) (ill.).
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Waldemar, George, Pablo Picasso (Rome: Valori Plastici, 1924), pl. VII.
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Quinn, John, 1870–1925: Collection of Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings, & Sculpture (New York: Pidgeon Hills Press, 1926), pp. 12 and 101 (ill.), as Maternité.
Watson, Forbes, “The John Quinn Collection, Part III,” The Arts 9 (February 1926), p. 87 (ill.), as Maternity.
Schürer, Oscar, “Pablo Picasso,” Der Cicerone 18:23 (December 1926), p. 769 (ill.), as Mutter mit Kind am Meer.
—-, Pablo Picasso (Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1927), n.p. (ill.), as Mutter mit Kind am Meer.
Der Querschnitt 10 (1929), p. 717 (ill.).
Cahiers d’Art 3-5 (June 1932), n.p. (ill.), as Femme et enfant au bord de la mer.
Wilenski, R. J., Modern French Painters (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1940), pp. 285 and 297, fig. 81B, as Femme et enfant au bord de la mer.
Barr, Jr., Alfred H., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946), p. 124 (ill.).
Merli, Joan, Picasso (Buenos Aires: Editorial Poseidon, 1948), n.p., fig. 251, as Maternidad, Colección Mrs. Averill Harriman, Nueva York.
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Richardson, John, Picasso: An American Tribute—The Classical Phase, exh. cat. (New York: Chanticleer, 1962), n.p., cat. 18 (ill.).
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Kay, Helen, Picasso’s World of Children (New York: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 92–93 (ill.), as Woman and Child.
Speyer, A. James, “Twentieth-Century Paintings and Sculpture,” Apollo 84 (September 1966), pp. 224, ill. fig. 3, 225.
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Samuels, Mike and Nancy, Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 76, pl. 3.
Baumann, Felix Andreas, Pablo Picasso: Leben und Werk (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1976), pp. 99 and 102, fig. 172, as Mutter und Kind am Meersstrand.
Green, Christopher, Léger and the Avant-Garde (New Haven, Conn.; Yale University Press, 1976), p. 219, fig. 143.
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10X Picasso, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, 1977), p. 34 (ill.).
Zilczer, Judith, “The Noble Buyer:” John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde, exh. cat. (Washington DC: Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1978), pp. 50–51 and 178, fig. 36.
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Speyer, A. James, and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth Century European Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 63, no. 3D4.
Gedo, Mary Matthews, Picasso: Art as Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 124–125 (ill.).
Wood, James N., and Katherine C. Lee, Master Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1988; reprinted in 1999), p. 131 (ill.).
Weisner, Ulrich, Picassos Klassizismus: Werke von 1914–1934, exh. cat. (Bielefeld, Germany: Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1988), p. 325, fig. 51a, as Mutter und Kind, Maternité.
Silver, Kenneth E., Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War 1914–1925 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. XIX and 280, fig. 190.
Wedding, Danny, Behavior and Medicine (St. Louis: Mosby Year Book, 1990), p. 63 (ill.).
Picasso: Une Nouvelle Dation, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991), p. 150 (ill.), as Femme et enfant au bord de la mer.
Kosinski, Dorothy, “G. F. Reber: collector of Cubism,” Burlington Magazine 133:1061 (August 1991), p. 531.
Bernadac, Marie-Laure, Picasso Museum, Paris: The Masterpieces, trans. by Jean Marie Clarke (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), p. 72, as Motherhood.
Segi, Sin’ichi, Ai sei to shi (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1991), n.p. (ill.).
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—-, Treasures of 19th-and 20th-Century Painting: Art Institute of Chicago (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), p. 226 (ill.).
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Realismo mágico: Franz Roh y la pintura europea, 1917-1936, exh. cat. (Spain: IVAM Centre Julio González, 1997), p. 67 (ill.), as Maternidad.
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Paris, Galeries Paul Rosenberg, 1922.
New York, Art Center, Memorial Exhibition of Representative Works Selected from the John Quinn Collection, January 7–30, 1926, p. 8, cat. 19, as Maternity.
New York, Brummer Galleries, Exhibition of Prints, Paintings and Sculpture from the John Quinn Collection, March 1926.
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Chicago, Art Institute, Picasso in Chicago, February 3–March 31, 1968, pp. 28, 57, and 113, cat. 25 (ill.).
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The artist; Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959), Paris, by 1922 [this and the following, letter from Alexandre Rosenberg, Oct. 28, 1975; copy in curatorial file]; sold to John Quinn (1870–1924), New York, June 1922 [Invoice, June 12, 1922; copy in curatorial file]; Quinn estate, 1924 [New York 1926]; sold to Paul Rosenberg, Paris, 1926; by exchange to Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich von Reber (1880–1959), Lausanne, by Dec. 1926 [Schürer 1926]; sold to Paul Rosenberg, New York, June 9, 1953; sold to the Art Institute, 1954.

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