Five paintings that capture the complexity of motherhood – chosen by art historians

The complex relationship between mother and child is no easy thing to capture on canvas. For Mother’s Day, we asked five experts to share their favourite painting of a mother or maternal figure.

1. Hunting for Lice by Gerard ter Borch (1652)

This small painting, displayed in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, is of a scene that might be familiar to any carer for nursery- or school-aged children today. Gerard ter Borch captures the look of concentrated maternal resolve and patient resignation by the child, who is probably a boy, judging by his smock and the ball in his hand.

He has paused his play and leans into the stout frame of his seated and respectably dressed mother. Typical of Dutch genre painting, it carries a moral message and finds spirituality in the humblest acts. The fine-toothed comb was an artistic and poetic symbol for purging the soul as well as the body, so this mother is not only caring for the physical health of her son but also looking to his eventual salvation. But we can also just enjoy her slight smile of pleasure and gratification in this moment of purposeful closeness with her dear child.

Marius Kwint is a reader in visual culture

2. Madonna of the Pilgrims by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1603-5)

Caravaggio’s altarpiece, the Madonna of the Pilgrims, offers a beguiling mixture of the ordinary and the extraordinary. The setting is minimal, plain and achingly mundane: a doorframe with chipped masonry; some exposed bricks; a stone doorstep. A young mother – beautiful, but a little down-at-heel – supports a weighty infant on her hip.

The bond between mother and child is tangible, believable and thoroughly human. Their faint halos, though, confirm that these figures are far from ordinary. The gloomy doorway where they stand is, apparently, the entrance to the shrine of the Holy House of Loreto, the Virgin Mary’s home.

The humble, kneeling pilgrims at the Virgin’s door are not only shabbily dressed but actually grubby – the dirty feet of one made this painting notorious. Yet their piety is rewarded as the holy figures gaze on them sympathetically and Christ seems to extend his small hand in a gesture of blessing.

Alice E. Sanger is an honorary associate and associate lecturer in art history

3. Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist by Édouard Vuillard (1893)

Most western painting romanticises mothers, highlighting blissful, tender intimacy. In these paintings, mothers are usually young, with babies or small children. But where are the complex realities of mother-child difficulty, separation and resentment – and of motherhood as tribulation and endurance (think adolescent and boomerang kids)?

Édouard Vuillard’s Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893) portrays a psychologically intense mother-daughter adult relationship. Vuillard painted his mother more than 500 times and lived with her till she died (when he was 60). He said: “Ma maman, c’est ma muse” – my mother is my muse.

In the crowded space of Interior, a mature Madame Vuillard dominates: legs akimbo, elbows jutting like a seated boxer’s, her solid black body a vortex pulling in the room, its furniture and her daughter. The daughter is consumed by the oppressive domesticity (as shown by the wallpaper) and simultaneously repelled by and drawn – bowing – towards her mother. The power is starkly asymmetrical, and intimacy disturbing. Mother-child relations are sometimes unsavoury. In Interior, Vuillard boldly acknowledges this truth.

Jen Harvie is a professor of contemporary theatre and performance

4. The Mothers by Käthe Kollwitz (1921-1922)

Mothers huddled together in unimaginable pain and grief. I just can’t get past this image right now. This woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz is the second last of her war portfolio. Her personal experience informed the print. Her son, Peter, was killed on the front in 1914.

The mothers in Kollwitz’s image form almost a sculptural mass, a community bound together by throbbing heartache. This highly emotive image shows the irretrievable consequences of war, the children that these mothers have lost, and are afraid of losing.

Wars might be won and lost in the air, or on the front, or in a control room somewhere far away, but I believe it is the women and children on the ground who suffer the most. And it is the mothers who have to carry the weight of the loss of a generation.

Pragya Agarwal is a visiting professor of social inequities and injustice

5. Mother and Child by William Rothenstein (1903)

In the 1900s William Rothenstein completed a series of paintings depicting his wife – the actor Alice Knewstub – posed in various interiors. The paintings chart the early years of their marriage and the growth of their family. Mother and Child, which falls somewhere in the middle of this series, represents Alice holding their oldest child John (who would go on to become director of the Tate).

Rothenstein’s representations of the mother and child relationship differ across the paintings. What I think he captures especially well in this one is the way in which parents support their children to stand up, knowing that one day those legs may take them far away. Alice’s attention is on John, but John’s attention is on whatever is going on outside the window. The positioning of the model ship just above his head extends the theme of wanting to hold onto something that cannot be held forever.

I’ve always wondered whether this painting was well known to one of Rothenstein’s later students, a young sculptor called Henry Moore, who was similarly (and more famously) drawn to the subject of the mother holding a child. It seems very likely.

Samuel Shaw is a senior lecturer in art history

What is your favourite painting of a mother or maternal figure? Let us know in the comments below.

Our senior arts and culture editor Anna Walker’s favourite is Breakfast in Bed by Mary Cassatt (1897). So much can be read in the mother’s face – exhaustion, love, fear, protectiveness. Through her painting, Cassatt immortalises an intimate moment from the fleeting period of a child’s infancy.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.