“Motherhood”
Here is a loving piece celebrating the domestic side of life.
“Motherhood” is a pastel on paper drawing from 1905 by the Polish Post-Impressionist artist, Stanisław Wyspiański. Though Wyspiański is mostly known for his plays, throughout his life, he continually worked on the visual arts, creating portraits of his family and friends as well as landscapes. He worked mostly in pastels but also used oil paints.
In 1900, Wyspiański married his aunt’s servant, Teodora Pytko, with whom he already had two children, a daughter Helena, born in 1895, and a son Mieczyslaw, born in 1898. In 1901, they welcomed their third child, a son, Stanisław. He often documented his domestic life in informal pastel sketches and created a number of intimate pieces of his life at home.
In this piece, Wyspiański lovingly depicts his wife nursing their newborn son. This drawing is an expansion of a 1902 sketch of the same name featuring his wife, Teodora, and his son, Stanisław. The 1902 drawing is in the collections of the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie in Warsaw. He expanded the sketch into this more formal filled-in piece. He added two more figures to the scene, both of which are Wyspiański’s daughter, Helena, drawn twice. Large yellow ribbons fasten her hair into pigtails. Helena looks at the child nursing in utter fascination.
In the 1905 finished version, Wyspiański fills in the background with white flowering geraniums, their leaves a pattern of green and brown. The figures are wearing decorative patterns adding colorful detail. Wyspiański’s wife, Teodora, has red fuchsia flowers on her blouse. The overall color palette is also different from the cool blues of the 1902 drawing. The final version has a warmer tone, with yellows, greens, and browns. The artist’s signature is in the lower right.
“Motherhood” is currently in the collections of the Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie in Kraków, Poland.
For more on Stanisław Wyspiański, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
