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Image permission and credit:

EUGENE CARRIERE France 1849 - 1906
Mère et enfant, la lecture
1889 circa
Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 46.00 cm x 38.00 cm
Signed lower left : Eugène Carrière
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Alone with her child, Sophie Carrière rests her head upon her hand with a gaze of motherly love and contentment. The baby, possibly the artist’s third daughter Nelly, studies a book with innocent curiosity. Whilst the artist’s focus is on the interaction between mother and baby, the features of a room: a painting, a chair and a table materialise from the darkness.

Detail became increasingly unimportant to Carrière during the 1880s and by 1886 even his commissioned portraits began to blend into their backgrounds. In this private work his brushstrokes are fluid and painterly. The harmony between mother and child is echoed in the carefully balanced composition: the powerful left to right diagonal of the figures balanced by vertical from the doorway behind. He uses a similar composition in Le Goûter (c.1886, Musée du Louvre), where Madame Carrière watches over her baby at mealtime.

Exhibition Catalogue no, Page no, Illustration no. Institution/Venue People From To
The Leicester Galleries at The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Art Fair 2006 Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries June 2006 June 2006
Eugene Carriere, Intimite: In Celebration of the Artist's Centenary Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries
June 2006 September 2006

To be included in the Catalogue raisonné des peintures d'Eugène Carrière, Rodolphe Rapetti, Veronique Milin-Dumesnil, Alice Bourgoin-Lamarre, Gallimard, Paris.


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