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Printed with black and gray lines and white shading on ivory-white paper, a woman sits cross-legged, bent over and arms wrapped tightly around the torso of a smaller body limply lying across her lap in this nearly square print. The stooped woman fills most of the composition, and the child’s body is cropped at the waist by the right edge of the paper. The woman’s body is angled to our left so her left knee comes toward us. Her right leg is mostly hidden by the child’s body, but the toes of that foot dig into her other knee. The child’s head hangs back between the woman’s knees. The child’s features are indistinct, but the eyes are closed. The woman buries her face in the child’s neck, and zigzagging lines suggest her eyes are squeezed shut. Dark lines and shading suggest the woman’s hair is pulled back. The gnarled hand we can see cradles the child’s right shoulder. The space around the pair is empty, though there are a few gray smudges and marks across the background. The woman’s body is especially heavily outlined. The artist’s signature is barely legible, signed in graphite in the lower left, “Kollwitz.”

Käthe Kollwitz

Woman with Dead Child (Frau mit totem Kind), 1903

Not on View

Medium

etching and soft ground etching with graphite, black chalk, and metallic paints on wove paper [trial proof]

Dimensions

sheet (trimmed to and within plate mark): 41.7 x 47.2 cm (16 7/16 x 18 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Philip and Lynn Straus, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Catalogue Raisonné

Klipstein 1955, no. 72, State iv/x (trial proof)

Accession Number

1988.67.1

Artists / Makers

Käthe Kollwitz (artist) German, 1867 - 1945

Image Use

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Inscription

lower left in graphite: Kollwitz; all other inscriptions by later hand in graphite, lower left: S 72 IV; lower center: [OjV?]; lower right: IV; lower right verso: S.42.IV [?]; lower right verso: 2 2 / Ed./Ri[?]l

Exhibition History

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, 268-269, color repro.

1992: Käthe Kollwitz, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1992, no. 52, reproduced p. 44.

2009: The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; NGA; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, 2009 - 2010

Bibliography

1955: Klipstein, August. The Graphic Work of Kathe Kollwitz. New York: Galerie St. Etienne, 1955.

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991: p.268.

1994: Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago, 1994: cover illustration.

1997: Richler, Martha. National Gallery of Art, Washington: A World of Art. London, 1997: 178-179, fig. 16.

2002: Knesebeck, Alexandra von dem. Käthe Kollwitz. Werkverzeichnis der Graphik. 2 vols. Bern: Kornfeld, 2002.