Mosè Bianchi

Mosè Bianchi’s representation of the people of Milan may be compared to Jean Béraud’s Parisians and Jean François Millet’s Barbizon peasants.  In other words, Bianchi recorded the daily activities of the people he saw around him, and his carefully studied observations became the subject of his paintings.   His work, especially his paintings and drawings from the 1880s, have come to represent a pictorial documentation of Milan at the turn of the century.

The present painting is a tender interpretation of a mother with a young baby and what is most certainly the family dog, vying for attention from the mistress of the house. The fluid brushwork and delicate watercolor application is reminiscent of the work of two popular (and successful) contemporaries, Mariano Fortuny and Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, whose style Bianchi may have been trying to emulate.  It is known that he saw their work during a visit to Paris, accompanied by the well-known dealer, Adolphe Goupil.

Maternity was originally in the well-known Argentine collection of Juan and Felix Bernasconi, who for years purchased  nineteenth century Italian paintings and drawings directly from the artists in their workshops during visits to Milan.  When the Bernasoni brothers died, they had amassed the most comprehensive collection of works by Mosè Bianchi in the world.