Family

Family is, on the one hand, a testimony to the artist’s skill at simplified modern form: the whole composition containing five figures is, in fact, constructed from curved lines – intersecting arcs that constitute the oval heads and entire human shapes. On the other hand, it hints at the artist’s great fascination with the masters of Late Renaissance and Mannerism. Gottlieb skilfully inscribed all the figures into a triangular composition like in many works depicting families or groups of three women. One of the two mothers with children (adored by one more infant on the right) seems to be nursing a newborn, while the other is washing the child in a tub.

The natural approach to the theme of motherhood as regards the positioning of figures and the interaction between them brings to mind the painter’s mother described by his wife in the following way: “A simple, pious and good person, she loved her children dearly and took motherly care of them.” [A. Gottliebowa, Życie i twórczość Maurycego Gottlieba (1856–1879), "Miesięcznik Żydowski" 1932, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 206]. (AT)

Artur Tanikowski [in:] Leopold Gottlieb (exhibition catalogue), Wejman Gallery, Warszawa 2018, pp. 28-29.