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Destitute Mother and Child in Winter
Octave Tassaert (French, 1800–1874)
c. 1850
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 33 x 25 cm (13 x 9 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift in memory of Helen Borowitz
- 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 Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
One of France's leading artists of the mid-19th century, Octave Tassaert was known for his paintings of downtrodden workers, destitute mothers, suicides, and abandoned children. Viewers responded positively to his focus on issues of social injustice, as seen in this painting of a poor mother resting outdoors in the snow with her baby. She is leaning against a pile of sticks, a common activity among the poor of gathering and selling small pieces for wood for burning in fireplaces or stoves.
