Mother and child

A mother seated with her child at the breast, white drapery falling to the floor around her. Original charcoal on paper, signed, framed and ready to hang.

A woman sits on the edge of a claw-foot bath, feeding her child. Her head is tipped back and her eyes are closed. The baby holds on to her, one hand at her chest, legs bare and dangling.

Around them, the room as it actually is. Louvred shutters closed against the morning light, a wall panel with a carved bracket, a tap and its pipework, a plain floor. Nothing arranged, nothing decorative.

Most of the lower half of the sheet is given over to cloth. A white sheet falls from her lap, gathers over the rim of the bath and spreads wide across the floor. Charcoal is the right medium for that — laid down soft, lifted back with a finger, then driven dark into the deepest creases. Against the near-black of the shutters, that pale mass carries the whole composition.

The figures are handled with the same restraint. Tone models the shoulder, the arm, the turn of the child’s back, without hardening into outline anywhere. Her face is barely modelled at all — enough to know her eyes are shut, and that she is somewhere between tired and content.

No sentiment is applied to the scene. She is not gazing adoringly at the child. She is holding still, doing something she has done a hundred times, and resting while she does it. That plainness is what makes the drawing land.

Original charcoal on 300 GSM paper, fixed and signed by the artist. Supplied mounted and framed under glass with a certificate of authenticity. One of a kind — no reproductions of this drawing are sold.

Specifications:

• Subject: Mother and child
• Medium:  Charcoal on 300 GSM paper
• Genre: Figurative realism
• Type: Original, one of a kind
• Size: 24 x 32 in
• Orientation: Portrait/li>
• Framing:  Mounted, framed under glass
• Signed: Yes, by the artist
• Included: Certificate of authenticity