Mother + child, (Frau Prof. Ronband mit Lenbachs Tochter Marion)

Lenbach's 1902 painting of a mother and child — identified as Frau Professor Ronband with Lenbach's daughter Marion — is a domestically intimate work that contrasts with the official portrait commissions that dominated his career. The combination of another woman with his own daughter places the work in an unusual personal register, documentary as much as artistic. Lenbach had married relatively late and his daughter Marion was a young child in 1902, making this painting a family document of his last years. The Munich Central Collecting Point provenance suggests the work passed through wartime collecting and restitution processes before reaching its current status.

The mother-and-child composition allows Lenbach to deploy his portraiture skills within a more intimate and informal format than his official commissions demanded. The double figure is organized with his characteristic tonal authority — dark ground, warm glazed flesh — but the informal closeness of the two subjects gives the composition a tenderness distinct from his state portraits.