Mother

Joaquín Sorolla's 'Mother' (1900) depicts one of his most personal and emotionally direct subjects — the maternal figure was a constant throughout his career, and his treatment of the mother-and-child relationship was among his most admired and warmly received work. Sorolla's own family (his wife and children were his most frequent models) and his genuine feeling for domestic love gave his maternal subjects an authenticity that distinguished them from the more sentimental treatments of the same subject by less personally engaged artists.

Sorolla renders the mother with the luminous, confident technique that characterized all his best work — the figure in light, whether indoor or outdoor, depicted with the specific quality of illumination that gives his painting its characteristic vivid presence. His handling of the mother's figure and her relationship to the child (whether holding, nursing, or simply in proximity) creates the warm emotional content within the brilliant technical surface. His palette in domestic subjects tends toward warmer tones than his Mediterranean beach work.