Mother and Her Family in the Country
Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825)
1806/07
- Medium
- Pen and black ink, and brush and black and gray wash, with watercolor and traces of white gouache, over graphite, on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 45.7 × 31.1 cm (18 × 12 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Switzerland
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Margaret Day Blake Purchase Fund income
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Notwithstanding its ostensibly domestic theme, there is something slightly sinister in Fuseli’s rendering of a mother and her family, a study for a painting. The younger woman dangles a butterfly above the infant as if it were a toy, her menacing hairpin in frightening proximity to both insect and child. The seated woman presents the infant as if he were a sacrificial offering, and the fetishistic attention Fuseli pays to hair and dress strikes a disarmingly discordant note.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
