Offspring

Pietro della Vecchia
Woman with Child
before 1687
oil on canvas
private collection

Benjamin West
Mother and Child
1783
drawing
British Museum

Pierre-Augustin Thomire
Portrait of a Woman and Child
1783
oil on canvas
private collection

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Self Portrait with daughter Julie
1786
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Ralph Earl
Mrs William Taylor and her Daughter
1790
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Robert Lefèvre
Catherine Josephine Muller and her Daughter
1803
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Anonymous French Painter
Mother and Child
1831
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Robert Thorburn
Miniature Portrait of the Duchess of Buccleuch
and her daughter Lady Victoria Scott
1847
watercolor on ivory
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Gustaf Wappers
Mother and Child
1853
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña
Oriental Mother and Daughter
1865
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Thoma
In der Hängematte (the artist's wife and child)
1876
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Eva Gonzalès
Nursemaid and Child
ca. 1877-78
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Edmund Charles Tarbell
Mother and Child in a Boat
1892
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Edvard Weie
Mother and Child
1905
oil on canvas
private collection

Augustus John
Woman and Child
ca. 1911-12
oil on panel
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Alfonso Ossorio
Mother and Child
1951
oil and enamel on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Paul Strand
Postmistress and Daughter - Luzzara, Italy
1953
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

from The Wreck of the Deutschland

            For how to the heart's cheering

            The down-dugged ground-hugged grey

        Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing

            Of pied and peeled May!

    Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,

    With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,

        What by your measure is the heaven of desire,

The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?

– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1876)

Genoux - IV

Bicci di Lorenzo
Virgin and Child enthroned with Angels
1433
tempera on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Francesco di Giorgio Martini
Virgin and Child
with St Jerome, St Anthony of Padua and Angels
ca. 1469-72
tempera on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Neroccio de' Landi
Virgin and Child
with St Anthony Abbot and St Sigismund
ca. 1490-95
tempera on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Raphael
Virgin and Child
(The Orléans Madonna)
ca. 1505-1507
oil on panel
Musée Condé, Chantilly

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1509-1512
oil on panel
Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania

Ambrogio Bergognone
Virgin and Child
ca. 1512-20
tempera on panel
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Bernardino Luini
Virgin and Child
(Madonna of the Carnation)
ca. 1515
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Domenico Puligo (Domenico Ubaldini)
Virgin and Child
ca. 1515-17
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci)
Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1529-30
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Jacopo Sansovino
Virgin and Child
ca. 1530-40
painted papier-maché relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Marcellus Coffermans
Virgin and Child enthroned with Musical Angels
ca. 1550-75
oil on panel
Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

Sofonisba Anguissola
Virgin and Child
1598
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Jan Brueghel the Younger
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1626
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Virgin and Child
ca. 1641
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Francesco Mancini
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Carle Vanloo
Virgin and Child
1738
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

But the rest of the Thebans that should with their whole power have been there before day for fear the surprise should not succeed with those that were in, came so late with their aid that they heard the news of what was done by the way.  Now Plataea is from Thebes seventy furlongs, and they marched the slower for the rain which had fallen the same night.  For the river Asopus was swollen so high that it was not easily passable.  So that what by the foulness of the way and what by the difficulty of passing the river, they arrived not till their men were already some slain and some taken prisoners.  When the Thebans understood how things had gone, they lay in wait for such of the Plataeans as were without (for there were abroad in the villages both men and household stuff, as was not unlikely, the evil happening unexpectedly and in time of peace), desiring, if they could take any prisoners, to keep them for exchange for those of theirs within, which (if any were so) were saved alive.  This was the Thebans' purpose.  But the Plataeans, whilst they were yet in council, suspecting that some such thing would be done and fearing their case without, sent a herald unto the Thebans whom they commanded to say that what they had already done, attempting to surprise their city in time of peace, was done wickedly, and to forbid them to do any injury to those without, and that otherwise they would kill all those men of theirs that they had alive, which, if they would withdraw their forces out of their territory, they would again restore unto them.  Thus the Thebans say, and that the Plataeans did swear it.  But the Plataeans confess not that they promised to deliver them presently but upon treaty if they should agree, and deny that they swore it.  Upon this the Thebans went out of their territory; and the Plataeans, when they had speedily taken in whatsoever they had in the country, immediately slew their prisoners.  They that were taken were one hundred and eighty; and Eurymachus, with whom the traitors had practised, was one.

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Laborious

Thomas Barker
Tile Makers
1803
lithograph
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Anonymous Photographer
Carpenter holding Folding Rule
ca. 1845
hand-colored tintype
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Auguste Delâtre after Jean-François Millet
The Gleaners
ca. 1855
etching
Dallas Museum of Art

Edward von Steinle
Reaper
1867
graphite and gouache on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Camille Pissarro
The Maidservant
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Paul Gauguin
Breton Women Haymaking
(series, Joies de Bretagne)
1889
lithograph
British Museum

Kenyon Cox
Home-Study-Magazine-for-Machinists . . .
1898
lithograph (magazine cover)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Photographer
Gardeners bedding-out plants in parterre at Elizabeth Park - Hartford, Connecticut
ca. 1910
lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

David McCosh
Woman Ironing
1931
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Walker Evans
Truck Drivers, New York City
ca. 1934
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Leroy Flint
Shovelers
1937
etching
(WPA project)
Art Institute of Chicago

Seymour Fogel
Industrial Life
1941
tempera on paper
(study for WPA mural)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Printmaker
Look 'em over
ca. 1942
lithograph (poster)
(issued by War Production Co-ordinating Committee)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

William H. Johnson
Woman Ironing
1944
oil on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Joel Sternfeld
Egg Harbor, New Jersey
1972
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Bruce McKaig
Dressed for School
ca. 1995
hand-colored stereoview photograph
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Caroline Walker
Measuring
2019
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Clearista

For Death, not for Love, hast thou

    Loosened thy zone!

Flutes filled thy bower but now,

    Morning brings moan!
Maids round thy bridal bed

    Hushed are in gloom,

Torches to Love that led

    Light to the tomb. 

– Meleager (140-70 BC), translated by Andrew Lang (1887)