Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch)

Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch) Mother with children 1911 Oil on canvas. 128 x 97 cm. Framed. Signed in black lower left 'Muter'. - In very nice original condition. Isolated tiny color breaks in the impasto parts. On newer stretcher frame. Back with partly white overpainted figure composition. A photo of the painting is documented in the photo archive of the Bargera Gallery. Provenance Estate of the artist; Galerie Bargera (labels on the back of the stretcher); private collection Switzerland. It is actually her expressive portraits for which Mela Muter became known and famous. Descended from a wealthy Jewish-Polish merchant family, she quickly gained a foothold in Parisian society at the beginning of the 20th century and made friends with important avant-garde artists. She herself had studied in Warsaw and the Parisian academies Grande Chaumière and Colarossi. Soon she was portraying people of public interest - from the art trade, literature, politics and the upper circles. At the same time, however, she also has an immensely empathetic interest in the poorer population. With psychological curiosity, but never aloofly, she captures society's disadvantaged, sometimes in prominent pictorial formats; children in sparsely-poverished outfits as well as street musicians or families in domestic settings. Our large-format painting, for example, shows a young woman with her children at a meal. The room is flooded with light; through the open window, a balmy breeze gently moves the curtains. The view of mountains and river anchors the domestic scene in a rural nature and also refers to Mela Muter's interest in landscape painting. Flecks of light and a perspective that develops rapidly from the lower edge of the picture enliven the figurative scene, as do the summery strong colors in which clothes and utensils are given. The pyramidal structure and light direction show the mother here as the origin of all life, thus as a symbol of maternity, which has an aura of sacred calm. In the individual, Muter always seeks the characteristic, the supra-temporal. This painting meant so much to the painter that she kept it until the end of her life and later, apparently in accordance with a collector's wish, she preferred to paint a smaller version than to give it out of her hands (for a smaller version see: Magda Michalska, Mela Muter - Accomplished Portraitist and devoted Mother, in: Daily Art Magazine, Jan. 27, 2023, p. 2; exhib. Cat. Paris 1966 (Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier), Mela Muter, cat. No. 29 with ill.; exh. Cat. New York 1967 (Hammer Galleries), Mela Muter, cat. No. 17 with ill.).