The Blessed Mother (1892): Art, History and Details

The Blessed Mother (1892) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is George Hitchcock (American, 1850–1913).

The work and its context

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

George Hitchcock decided to study art in Paris after practicing law for five years. He eventually settled in Holland and painted this Dutch peasant mother holding her baby and posing formally in a garden. Hitchcock was a visionary painter fascinated by the power of faith. But, like with many of his paintings, both the title and the scene here remain ambiguous, being neither clearly religious nor clearly secular. Early critics praised the work for its technical sophistication and representation of maternal tenderness, but they questioned its religious merit. Other reviewers, however, recognized religious symbolism throughout the painting. The mother's lacy headdress can represent a halo. The apple tree suggests the lost Eden, recovered through the birth of the child. The young bullock hints to the future sacrifice of Christ, and the prominent red tulip at the feet of the figures symbolizes the cup of sorrow. This painting's religious ambiguity exemplifies the 19th-century struggle to bring faith to terms with technical, philosophical, and scientific advances, namely Darwinism. Left to search for meaning in life and a spiritual identity, many artists, like Hitchcock, looked to women and nature for a link to the divine.

Object facts

• Title: The Blessed Mother
• Date: 1892
• Creator attribution: George Hitchcock (American, 1850–1913)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 160.3 x 112 cm (63 1/8 x 44 1/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.1057

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• "The Wade Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 1 (1917): 3-12.
• Stott, Annette. "Marcia Oakes Woodbury and Religious Identity in Moeder en Dochter: Het Geheele Leven." Journal of the Archives of American Art, 56 no.1 (Spring 2017): 24-41.
• Belt, Werner van den, and Bob Hardus. De schilders van Duin- en Bollenstreek. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2021.

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.