An Italian Woman with Children by a Stream
Johann Köler, 1862
This genre scene by Johann Köler, dated 1862 and painted in oil on canvas, shows a woman in Ciociaro costume, linked in the catalogue to the Conca area, with children beside a stream. The work comes from a period when the painter, trained in St. Petersburg and familiar with Italy after his travels there in the late 1850s, was drawn to popular and rural types from southern Europe. Köler is best known as a portraitist and as a central figure of Estonian painting in the nineteenth century, so this subject, set far from his homeland, stands somewhat apart from the rural Estonian scenes for which he is also remembered. The composition relies on a warm palette and a realistic treatment of everyday life: the adult figure and the children sit naturally within the landscape, without dramatic gesture or theatrical staging. The painting is held by the Art Museum of Estonia and is displayed at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, where it documents the academic interest of the period in foreign folk types.
- Painter
- Johann Köler
- Date
- 1862
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 82 × 54 cm
- Museum
- Art Museum of Estonia's painting collection, Tallinn
- Genre
- genre art
- Depicts
- Ciociaro costume, Conca, woman, stream, child
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