Catalogue Entry
In Mother and Child, Twachtman depicted his wife Martha and infant son Quentin in their Greenwich home. It is clear that Twachtman considered this painting one of his most important; he exhibited it ten times between 1893 and 1902. The work is perhaps the most completeTwachtman created during his Greenwich years. In the work, Martha holds Quentin, at about six months of age, up to a mirror. Twachtman sensitively explores his son’s experience of a reflection that he does not yet recognize as his own. However, the intensity of Quentin’s gaze implies his father’s presence, which would also make sense given the perspective from which Twachtman would have observed the scene. While Martha gazes at her child, he gazes at his father, who also gazes at his wife.
For this work, Twachtman must have had in mind the long history of paintings featuring mirrors, but most especially Velazquez’s Las Meninas, 1656 (The Prado, Madrid). The way that Martha’s dark form frames Quentin’s white gown evokes the white dress of the infanta in Velazquez’s image, who is being admired by her parents (according to most interpretations).
To the right of Martha is a view into the dining room where one of the artist's paintings is partially visible. It appears to be September Sunshine (OP.923). The reflection in the mirror is of the living room, where a potted plant is resting on a ledge below windows that look south toward the front yard. Later the living-room wall would be extended outward and new nearly floor-to-ceiling windows would be installed. The lowering of the window ledge can be seen in Childe Hassam's The Children (fig. 1), depicting Marjorie Twachtman and a sibling at a table decorated with flowers in a vase. In Mother and Child, Twachtman included his family, his home, his paintings, and himself, implying his dual role as both the subject and creator of the work.
Twachtman first showed this painting, with its current title, at the American Art Galleries show of his work and that of Julian Alden Weir, Claude Monet, and Paul-Albert Besnard that was held May through September 1893. It was among the small group of works from the show by Twachtman and Weir sent on to the St. Botolph Club in November–December. There a critic for the Boston Herald referred to it as a work that "has great and sympathetic charm of tenderness." When it was included five years later in the first exhibition of the Ten American Painters (March–April 1898), its title was Baby’s Reflection (a reviewer for the Independent stated that the painting had been seen before). Reviewing the Ten show, John C. Van Dyke observed that the painting demonstrated how “[t]ruth and the decorative may go hand in hand. The broad truth of form is given in the picture called ‘Baby’s Reflection’ (No. 37), but with it is the added charm of light and color. Why not? A picture that fails to please the eye will have hard work reaching the mind or the emotions.”
The painting’s original title had been restored by the time it was purchased by the San Francisco art collector Jacob Stern (1851–1927) at some point before 1926. Twachtman’s Brush House (OP.1503) was also purchased by Stern. Born in New York, Stern was a businessman who settled in San Francisco early in his life. He created a gallery in his home including works by European and American artists. In addition to Twachtman, his American collection included works by Frank Currier, Toby Rosenthal, and Alice Schille.
From Chicago Times Herald 1901
But one important figure subject will be exhibited by Mr. Twachtman. It is a large upright, called "Baby’s Reflection" which evidences the . . . [artist] is an accomplished craftsman, possessing a facility for modeling. A woman in a dark frock with a new babe in her arms stands before a mirror, which reflects the child’s little round head, with its light growth of yellow hair. The figure of the baby is especially pleasing, and it is a capital description of winsome infancy.
From New York Commercial Advertiser 1901
In the figure pictures—there are not over half a dozen—the humanity might be lay figures for all the psychological interest that is conveyed. In none are the features of the face rendered, if we except that of an infant in “Baby's Reflection,” and while these figures make pleasant notes, their very importance of size at times demands surely more expression than has been given.
From Buffalo Fine Arts Society 1913
Mother and Child (also lent by Mrs. Twachtman), one of the rare figure paintings, the mother holding the baby in her arms, the face of the child reflected in a mirror, has an unusually fine disposition of masses; the child's head is beautifully drawn, the helplessness of the small body subtly expressed.
From Hale 1989
In Twachtman’s only known interior painting of figures created during the Greenwich years, also called Mother and Child (fig. 29), the overall composition is again the predominant aesthetic aspect of the work. Twachtman’s awareness of French Impressionist painting is strongly indicated by his inclusion of a mirror in the painting, a motif which appears in works by Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas and many other French and American painters in the era. A contemporary painting by J. Alden Weir, Face Reflected in a Mirror [Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence] is very similar to Twachtman’s Mother and Child and suggests that the two shared ideas about figure painting in the 1890s, although their technical methods differed vastly during the decade. In both paintings, the figures are shown in front of a mirror, which provides a different angle on their forms and implies the room in front of them. Both works suggest the influence of James McNeill Whistler in the asymmetrical balance of formal elements, the inclusion of figures are parts of arrangements, and the restricted tonal palettes. Weir’s composition is, however, more complex and more carefully worked out than Twachtman’s and shows the continued impact of his academic background. Weir trained in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Léon Gérôme, who stressed the execution of preliminary studies for finished works and the careful positioning of the figure in a well-defined space. But the balancing of horizontal and vertical elements in the painting and the cropping of the figure (by the bedpost that appears behind her in the mirror) indicates Weir’s interest in Japanese art and demonstrates the modern direction of his work in the 1890s.
In comparison to Weir’s depiction, Twachtman treats figures more abstractly, showing them broadly in the forefront of the canvas and repeating the group in reverse direction in the mirrored reflection. He expresses the effects of light and atmosphere in the room through a thick, layered brushstroke technique that brings out the stark whiteness of the baby’s dress next to the dark navy of Martha’s and repeats these tones in softer variations in the mirror’s reflection. The mirror takes up a larger area of the room in Twachtman’s painting than in Weir’s and sets the general atmospheric tone of the space. Even though the painting depicts a domestic interior scene, the artist’s interests are the same as those taken up in paintings of nature—reflections of light, color gradations, and surface textures. Twachtman seems to have considered Mother and Child to be one of his most successful works, since he included it as one of six paintings in the first exhibition of the Ten American Painters in 1898 (under the title Baby’s Reflection). He also exhibited the work at the Pennsylvania Academy Annual in 1899, in his 1901 one-man exhibitions in Chicago and Cincinnati, and in the Pan-American exhibition, also held in 1901. When the painting was exhibited in 1898, the New York Sun reviewer noted that “The broad truth of form is given in the picture called ‘Baby’s Reflection’ (No. 37), but with it is the added charm of light and color. Why not? A picture that fails to please the eye will have hard work reaching the mind or emotions.” When the painting was shown at the Albright Art Gallery in 1913, a critic noted that “Mother and Child . . . one of the rare figure paintings, the mother holding the baby in her arms, the face of the child reflected in a mirror, has an unusually fine disposition of masses; the child’s head is beautifully drawn, the helplessness of the small body subtly expressed.
From Larkin 1996
When the art colonists did turn to figurative work, it was generally to portray their relatives. John Twachtman presented his wife as a secular Madonna, holding their infant son to a mirror [p. 187].
- Museum website (https://art.famsf.org/john-henry-twachtman/mother-and-child-200745)