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Mother with Children Returning Home, 1863

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Oil on wood
53×41.7 cm

Artists

  • Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

    (Vienna 1793–1865 Hinterbrühl near Mödling)

Unfortunately not on display at the moment
The oil painting Mother with Children Returning Home by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865) seeks to produce a great effect in the viewer: The very fact that beholders have to think of themselves as observing the scene from within a dark, squalid cottage, whose open door frames the central theme and reveals a brightly lit landscape, invests the rendering with a surprising vantage point. Surrounded by children competing for her attention, laden with hay and her youngest child on her back, the mother is crossing the threshold. She is coming directly towards the beholder, a smile on her lips, while the well-nourished child above her head is also smiling and looking straight at us. Intended for wealthy city dwellers, Waldmüller’s painting, which was created in the last phase of Biedermeier painting in 1863, shows a pleasing idealization of the rural population’s hardships which has to be mistrusted.

MK, 2021

Object data

Artist/author
  • Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Title
Mother with Children Returning Home
Date
1863
Art movement
Biedermeier
Category
Painting
Material​/technique
Oil on wood
Dimensions
53×41.7 cm
Signature
Signed and dated lower right: Waldmüller 1863
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 636
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Selection of Reference works
  • Rupert Feuchtmüller: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller 1793-1865. Leben – Schriften – Werke, Wien 1996.
Catalogue raisonne
  • Feuchtmüller 1996: 1078
Keywords
group portraitwoman/girlchildmother and baby/young childopen doorrural lifeclothes/costumemountainsbasketcarrying a personcarrying somethingpostures and gestures of arms and hands (in relation to another person)walkingforest/woodstanding figure (fem.)

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i

Auktion: 24.03.1920, Ernst-Museum, Budapest, 11. Kunstauktion, Los Nr. 495
Gerstenberger, Chemnitz (1927); (1)
Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Wien (vor 1990-1994); (2)
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (seit 1994).

  1. Rupert Feuchtmüller, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller 1793-1865, Leben-Schriften-Werke, Wien 1996, S. 525, Nr. 1078
  2. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Wien 1990, S. 249, Nr. 125 (Abb. S. 224)

For provenance related information, please contact us.

Search in collection

group portraitwoman/girlchildmother and baby/young childopen doorrural lifeclothes/costumemountainsbasketcarrying a personcarrying somethingpostures and gestures of arms and hands (in relation to another person)walkingforest/woodstanding figure (fem.)