24 Hour Museum - official guide to UK museums, galleries, exhibitions and heritage
Gateway to Over 3,000 UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions
Skip to navigation
Exhibitions
Maternity In Art At The Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art
By Noelia Martinez
14/05/2008
Image: a painting of a man holding his baby son and both look very similar
Moyna Flannigan, Just like Daddy. © the artist
Exhibition Review - Maternity: Images of Motherhood At The Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
When I was a little girl people used to tell me: “When you grow up you have to find a husband and have children.” At that point in time, this seemed the main aim in a woman’s life: to look after her husband and bring up her kids. But time passes, things change and with it the concept of motherhood and, therefore, the family’s structure.
This topic is explored by the National Galleries of Scotland who have selected fourteen works from their collection to form the exhibition Maternity: Images of motherhood, which opened at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery before moving to Edinburgh where it will be shown at the Gallery of Modern Art until June 22.
The perception of maternity has been interpreted and re-interpreted throughout history. Reflecting this, the exhibition explores and analyses the concept from the early Renaissance to the present day. The Christian idea of the family has always been one of the pillars of Western society and the image of a mother and child the only way to interpret the image of motherhood.
Formerly, the bringing up of children was always related to women but perhaps surprisingly, as this exhibition proves, interpreted and analysed mostly by men.
Maternity: Images of motherhood is a show which can be subject to many interpretations and not just to the brief explanations in the leaflets and labels accompanying the exhibition that sometimes tend to limit rather than open up the range of ideas relating to the concept of maternity.
Image: a photograph of a woman holding a baby on her arm
Ruth Stirling, White Whale, 1988. © the artist
On one hand, the exhibition can be interpreted as a group of high quality artworks. After all, we have here paintings by Botticelli, Dominechino, Dali and Picasso. These artists have produced works that have endured through history and are still vital and a source of influence for new generations of artists.
On the other hand, the show contains works that generate social debate in the way they analyse the different stages through which women have passed to gain equality with men. In this way, the work Just like Daddy (1998) by Moyna Flannigan, disobeys tradition by replacing the mother with the father.
In contrast to Moyna Flannigan’s work, Botticelli’s fifteenth-century masterpiece The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child – the earliest picture in the exhibition – shows a more traditional and classical rendition of maternity.
This image, full of symbolism, depicts the Virgin adoring her son, who lies in swaddling clothes on the ground – a metaphoric representation of the dead Christ wrapped in the burial shroud. To the left of her, the pink roses allude to the Virgin’s purity as the “rose without thorns”.
George Romney, for his part, shows an aristocratic conception of the maternal role with his portrait of Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon and her son, the Marquis of Huntly. Women’s importance in society can be seen here to move to another level, honouring the Duchess as a mother who has produced a male heir for her husband’s title and wealth.
Image: a painting showing the Madonna parying over baby Jesus
Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, c.1485. © National Museums Scotland
Scottish painters, William Strang and Sir William Quiller Orchardson, show a more dramatic and rural conception of maternity in Despair (1889) and Through the Corn (1859).
Strang confronts us with a brutally realistic image of motherhood at the bottom end of the social scale while Orchardson portrays a tired mother struggling through a field at the end of the day with her child on her back.
Pablo Picasso is not far from Strang’s and Orchardson’s interpretation of maternity in his Mother and Child (1902). This is a work painted during what is commonly known as his ‘Blue Period’.
The figure of a woman turned away from the viewer, suggests her suffering and shame. This painting was influenced by the artist’s regular visits to a women's prison-hospital in Paris. The misery of those women, many of whom had babies or young children, is captured in this image.
Robert Sargent Austin’s engraving, Young Mother (1936), Eduardo Paolozzi’s collage, Ruth Stirling’s print photograph White Whale (1988), Damian Hirst’s sculpture Wretched War (2004), Christine Borland’s Twin, Hand-Made, Child Birth Demonstration Model (1997) complete this exhibition together with the Kerry Stewart sculpture, The only solution was…(1997).
Image: a photo of a prone human figure made out of fabric
(Above) Christine Borland, Twin, Hand-Made, Child-Birth Demonstration Model, 1997. © the artist
The latter is a work that represents the most contemporary idea of maternity. By separating the baby from his mother, the artist brings up the panic and fears that are now associated with looking after children.
What Stewart’s work clearly demonstrates is that the image of mother and child, an important icon in European culture in earlier works, has nearly disappeared, and the concepts of motherhood and fatherhood now emerge together to create new forms of familial structure.
Have you been to see the show? Why not let us know what you think?
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (National Galleries of Scotland)
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art , Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR, Lothian, Scotland
Open: Mon-Sat 1000-1700
Sun 1400-1700
Related Articles
Tracey Emin - 20 Years - At Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art
News In Brief - Week Ending April 20 2008
Richard Long At Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art
News In Brief - Week Ending August 19 2007
News In Brief - Week Ending March 18 2007
Scottish Artists Bring Venice Biennale Home To Edinburgh
Lord Winston To Lead Gulbenkian Museums & Galleries Prize Judges
E-news registration
E-mail story to a friend
Tell us what you think
Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck To Titian At The National Gallery
Gimme Shelter - Punters Tackle Tate's Latest Turbine Hall Experiment
The Revolution Continues At The New Saatchi Gallery
More Than 75 Exhibitions - Brighton Photo Fringe 2008
Thomas Hirschhorn - The Incommensurable At Brighton's Fabrica
Allen Ruppersberg's First Solo Show At Camden Arts Centre
New Light On Andy Warhol''s Works At The Hayward Gallery
Remembering The Great War At Imperial War Museum London
Holman Hunt's Story Paintings Fill Manchester Art Gallery
Miró, Calder, Giacometti, Braque At The Royal Academy
Brighton Photo Biennial 2008 Questions War Photography
Hunterian Museum Exhibits Drawings Of Rare Disease
Tracey Chevalier Curates A Thousand Words At York Gallery
Both Sides Of The Iron Curtain - Cold War Modern At The V&A
Four Hopefuls Unveiled For The Turner Prize 2008 At Tate Britain
MADE UP At Liverpool Biennial Of Contemporary Arts 2008
National Maritime Museum Displays Francis Frith Postcard Images
Iconic Rothko Seagram Murals Reunited At Tate Modern
Search this site
Home Page
News Page
Exhibition Page
What's On
Trails Page
Website of the Week
Letters Page
Welsh Home
Graphical Version
Copyright © 24 Hour Museum
Information published here was believed to be correct at the time it was prepared. Welsh language pages developed with CYMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, funded by the Welsh Assembly Government.