CAREL EUGENE MULERTT

(German-American, 1869-1915)

MOTHER AND CHILD

Watercolor and Gouache on Paper

21¼ x 18 Inches

Signed Lower Left, 'Carel Mulertt'

 

Born in Germany, Carel Mulertt moved to New York in 1881 and, in 1893, to Paris where he attended the Académie Julien. For several years, he studied with some of France's most prominent genre and figure painters, including Benjamin Constant, William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Paul Laurens. During this period, he exhibited widely and with success including at the Paris Salons (1893-95, 1898-99) where he showed numerous figural works and coastal scenes.

 

After marrying into a Dutch family and settling in Holland, Mulertt began to specialize in the scenes of maternity and childhood for which he is now chiefly known. These atmospheric works were painted in soft focus with a gentle palette and Mulertt often invested his closely-observed figures with an unusual degree of psychological penetration. In this lyrical example, the artist has illuminated the eternal bonds of love that bind the mother to her infant child.

 

Displayed in the original and period, hand-carved giltwood frame.

 

Reference:

Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 2, page 3529; American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, Lois Marie Fink, Cambridge University Press 1990, page 374; Biographisch Woordenboek van Noord Nederlandsche Graveurs, F. G. Waller, Editor: Willem Rudolf Juynboll, Amsterdam, B.M. Israël 1974, page 232; Holland Mania: the Unknown Dutch Period in American Art & Culture, Anette Stott, Abrams Press 1998, page 118, 273; Mallett’s Index of Artists, Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Peter Smith: New York 1948 Edition, R.R. Bowker Company 1935, page 303; et al.