About this artwork
In A Young Mother, Bessie Potter Vonnoh recast a traditional subject into a modern, lively composition of a woman and child. Impressionist in finish, the sculpture’s surfaces are suggestive and earthy rather than detailed and polished. The woman’s slender features and the lines of her dressing gown evoke a contemporary sitter yet, rather than a portrait, the work offers a broader interpretation of maternal affection.
Raised and trained in Chicago, Vonnoh set up a studio in the city in the mid-1890s, garnering wide acclaim for her sculptures of female figures, whose small scale suited domestic spaces.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 161
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Department
- Arts of the Americas
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Artist
- Bessie Potter Vonnoh
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Title
- A Young Mother
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Modeled 1896
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Medium
- Bronze
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Edition
- No. XX
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Inscriptions
- Signed and inscribed verso, on base top, incised in cast: "Bessie O. Potter No. XX / Copyright / 1903". Stamped verso, bottom-middle, on base: "ROMAN BRONZE WORKS".
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Dimensions
- 34.3 × 32.4 × 39.4 cm (13 1/2 × 12 3/4 × 15 1/2 in.)
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Credit Line
- William C. Seipp Fund
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Reference Number
- 1915.193
Extended information about this artwork
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