Maternity Eugène Carrière

Eugène Carrière was an independent figure of late nineteenth-century French art. Developing a unique style, he never joined any artistic group or movement. Although his later work can be linked in some aspects to symbolism, his blurry,
monochromatic manner, his deeply emotional approach remained entirely personal. This painting, acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest at
the sale of the G. Bing collection in Paris in 1927, is a fine example of the painter’s characteristic technique and themes. Family, maternity, intimacy are at the centre of the work. The composition focuses almost exclusively on the two figures, a young woman and a baby, who are shown very close to the picture plane, and occupy almost all the pictorial space. The painter concentrated on their faces and the affection showing from their expressions and gestures. They are locked together in a tight and warm embrace; the interplay of arms and hands forms an arabesque that unites the whole composition. The overall tonal, blurry effect, the delicate play of light and shadow also contribute to only patch of colour is provided by the reddish ribbon of the rattle in the foreground.
Carrière often depicted the members of his large family, and Mária Illyés suggested that the models for the painting may have been two of his children,
Elise and Anne (Illyés 2001, 155). As the canvas cannot be dated with precision, it is unsure whether the latter, nicknamed Toutiti, born in 1899, is the infant appearing here. The young woman, on the other hand, may well be Elise, who was one of the
painter’s favourite models.
French writer Edmond de Goncourt described Eugène Carrière as the painter of a worrying, apprehensive k ind of ‘modern maternit y’, mentioning his presentations of ‘anxious embraces’ and motherly ‘arms fearfully wrapped around a child’s body’. There is no trace, however, of this sort of neurotic, restless love in the painting.
This work, picturing an instant of pure maternal bliss, has the evanescent, hazy quality of distant, happy memories.

Anna Zsófia Kovács