A Tender Moment: Mother Comforting Her Sick Son, with Their Faithful Dog

Ernestine Friedrichsen (Danzig 1824 to 1892 Düsseldorf)

Oil on canvas

Canvas 70 x 82 cm, in the original giltwood frame 100 x 112 cm

Ernestine Friedrichsen trained in Düsseldorf under Wilhelm Sohn and Rudolf Jordan and became known for intimate domestic genre scenes, often set in humble interiors and centred on the bond between mother and child. Her work found favour at the highest levels, with Kaiser Wilhelm I acquiring her painting Sommerlust in 1884.
This charming and sensitively observed canvas depicts a mother seated at the bedside of her convalescent son, gently offering him comfort as their small terrier watches attentively from the floor. The warm domestic interior, with its curtained bed, floral still life and modest furnishings, is characteristic of Friedrichsen's affectionate depictions of family life, and the subject relates closely to her known composition In der Genesung. The painting is presented in its original elaborately carved giltwood frame, fitted with a period brass plaque inscribed with the artist's name and dates.

She was a member of the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, an association of female artists, and maintained her own studio in Düsseldorf from 1867 until her death. Her works were exhibited in Dresden, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. Alongside her domestic family scenes, a recurring theme in her oeuvre was the life of Polish raftsmen and Jewish communities in Masuria, a subject she documented during her travels. One work with a Jewish subject is held in the Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection at the University of Chicago Library.

Bettina Baumgärtel, Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: "Verzeichnis der ausländischen Künstler und Künstlerinnen. Nationalität, Aufenthalt und Studium in Düsseldorf". In: Bettina Baumgärtel (ed.): Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819 to 1918, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978 3 86568 702 9, Vol. 1, p. 430.
"Friedrichsen, Ernestine". In: Hermann Alexander Müller, Biographisches Künstler Lexikon. Die bekanntesten Zeitgenossen auf dem Gebiet der bildenden Künste aller Länder mit Angabe ihrer Werke, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1882, p. 186.
Ariane Neuhaus Koch (ed.): Dem Vergessen entgegen. Frauen in der Geistesgeschichte Düsseldorfs. Lebensbilder und Chroniken, Ahasvera Verlag, Neuss 1989, ISBN 3 927720 01 1, pp. 35 to 36.
"Friedrichsen, Ernestine". In: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Vol. 45, Saur, Munich/Leipzig 2005, p. 177.
"Friedrichsen, Ernestine". In: Meyers Großes Konversations Lexikon, Vol. 7, Leipzig 1907, pp. 144 to 145.
"Friedrichsen, Ernestine". In: Brockhaus' Konversations Lexikon, Vol. 7, F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig/Berlin/Vienna 1894, p. 354.
The artist is further recorded in the Thieme Becker (Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart), the standard German language biographical dictionary of artists, and in a short biography held by the Women's Archive of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, documenting the historical residences of notable women of the Düsseldorf cultural scene.