Mother's Day 2016

Grant Wood, Hattie Weaver Grant, 1929

Happy Mother's Day to you and yours.  This blog post is dedicated to my mother, Mildred Gersh, who gave me a love for art through our many visits to museums.  Thank you, Mom.

Please make visits to museums a frequent and pleasant experience for your family.  Take your children and grandchildren to a museum for a short time - an hour or so.  Not too long.  Just enough time to whet the appetite for more, another day. 

Also, have the children select a reproduction in the bookstore as a souvenir of the trip to the museum. The purchase not only supports the museum, it also extends the experience past the doors of the museum and into one's personal space, one's comfort zone.

I urge you to frame these museum reproductions so that they hang in the child's bedroom, creating a personal connection that will last a lifetime.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytgbrouch. van Rijn, 1629

Rembrandt's mother's face is familiar to us through other works wherein she served as his model.

Vincent van Gogh, Anna Cornelia Carbentus van Gogh, 1888

Almost smiling, Anna van Gogh seems to listen intently.  She provided solace for her son when he was at odds with his father. An artist in her own right, she too studied art and drew plants and flowers in notebooks. 

Andy Warhol, Julia Justine Zavacka Warhola, 1974

Julia Warhola is truly the Mother of Pop Art.  Her charming European script graces most of Andy Warhol's early works, such as the greeting cards and clever books. Examples of her work are currently on view at the Morgan Library in the exhibition Warhol by the Book, closing on May 15th. 

For other artists' mothers place click on this link.  

And please check out our Mother's Day Special: private tours for $250 per group, if you book by June 1st. Tours will be conducted this summer.  Reservations at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Happy Mother's Day to you and yours - 

Beth New York

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange.

Portraits of Artists' Mothers

Mary Cassatt, Reading the Figaro (Portrait of the Artist's Mother), 1878

Katherine Kelson Johnston

Louisine Havermeyer wrote in her memoirs Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector (Ursus Press, 1993): "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt's mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that [Mary] inherited her ability."

Here are other artists' mothers who have gave us their talents through their children:

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1  

(The Artist's Mother), 1871

Anna McNeill

Paul Cézanne, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1867

Anne Elisabeth Honorine Aubert

Berthe Morisot, Portrait of the Artist's Mother and Sister, 1869-70

 Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie Thomas

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1896

Marie Picasso y Lopez

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1897

Anna Tanner

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926-36

Gorky's mother died of starvation in 1919 

The portrait is based on a 1912 photo

Happy Mother's Day,

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director, New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com