Mater Dolorosa (Mourning Mother) (1776): Art, History and Details

Mater Dolorosa (Mourning Mother) (1776) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is George Romney (British, 1734–1802).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

George Romney drew prolifically and his vivid spontaneity is most apparent in hundreds of bold studies rendered in a highly personalized style. This preparatory drawing was for an unrealized history painting intended to decorate the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. The simplified figure of the mourning Virgin was drawn with flowing lines and heavy ribbons of wash. Romney gave form to the mournful tone of his subject with descending lines that pool at the bottom of the composition. The Virgin’s oversized, pleading hands further emphasize the pathos of his subject.

Object facts

• Title: Mater Dolorosa (Mourning Mother)
• Date: 1776
• Creator attribution: George Romney (British, 1734–1802)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: brown ink, pen and wash, with graphite underdrawing
• Dimensions: Sheet: 50.1 x 29.3 cm (19 3/4 x 11 9/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1970.338

A detail from the museum

The painting to which this drawing relates was never realized because an Old Master Italian canvas was donated and took its place in the chapel for which it was intended.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Recent Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, October-December 1970." Art Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Summer 1971).
• Dixon, Yvonne Romney. "Designs from Fancy": George Romney's Shakespearean Drawings. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1998.
• Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.