Mother with Two Children III

1915–1917

Oil on canvas, 150 × 159.8 cm. Belvedere, Vienna

A veiled mother sits between two small children in striped, brightly colored clothes, all set against a dark ground. Her pale, hollow-eyed face is the still center of a crowded, patterned group.

Begun in 1915, it carries only the final year, 1917, in its signature at lower center.
Look at the orange, fringed forms that frame each child like a niche.
The white drapery is built up in thick layers of paint; the Belvedere keeps an X-ray of the canvas.
Doll-like children with staring eyes and a remote, veiled mother turn a traditionally comforting subject toward unease.
The Belvedere bought it in 1951 from Jenny Steiner, then living in New York.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art