Der Sohn des Künstlers als Kind

Albert von Keller's Der Sohn des Künstlers als Kind (The Artist's Son as a Child, 1889) is a personal portrait — the painter documenting his own child with the same observational rigor he brought to medical subjects and spiritualist phenomena. Child portraiture held a specific place in Von Keller's practice alongside his more unusual subjects: his images of children combine genuine parental affection with the observational discipline of his academic training. The portrait of his son gives a more intimate, personal dimension to a body of work that was otherwise focused on the extreme, the mystical, and the disturbing.

Von Keller renders his son with the careful academic technique he brought to all his portraiture, softened by the subject's youth and their personal relationship. His palette for child portraiture is warmer and lighter than for his corpse studies or spiritualist subjects — the fresh coloring of a healthy child, rendered with the specific warmth of familial affection. The modeling achieves individual likeness while conveying the particular quality of childhood: the unguarded expression, the specific proportions of a child's face.