Gari Melchers: Young Mother (1892-5)

“In this poignant work entitled Young Mother, Gari Melchers portrays a mother and child, a favorite theme throughout the artist’s career, in a form suggestive of religious imagery. Evoking past images of the Madonna and Child and introducing the compositional device of a porcelain plate as a halo. Melchers creates a radiant image of a parent’s eternal love. “Melchers’s large religious genre paintings were major achievements for the young artist and still retain their original depth of meaning and expressive power. The artist’s forthright and realistic style strongly conveys the implicit moral content that underlies the subject matter. The peasants are depicted with an uncompromising honesty that is the stylistic equivalent of their personal sincerity…The carefully orchestrated compositions suggest the ordered structure…