Aleksei Alekseevich Kharlamov, Young Woman and Child, 1897, 137.5 x 93.8 cm, oil on canvas, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick.
Aleksei Alekseevich Kharlamov, Young Woman and Child
Mother as Ideal, Mother as Protector
Aleksei Kharlamov, a Russian painter born into a family of surfs, is known for his romantic, idealized portraits of young, innocent women. He spent the majority of outside of Russia in émigré communities in Western Europe, particularly Paris, which helps to explain why the women in his portraits, despite being placed into rural Eastern backdrops, are often dressed in clothing more common amongst the wealthy in Western Europe.
“Young Woman and Child” is a provision title as the piece was originally left without one, thus it is ambiguous whether the two figures are mother and child or sisters. Kharlamov seldom portrays children as young as the girl resting in the arms of the woman, nor are his subject matters worn down and tired, so it is possible to surmise that he is intentionally depicting motherhood. Considering the various clues that suggest the woman on the right is a mother–the way she protects the girl by hoisting her tightly onto her shoulder as though acknowledging her heft, the suggestion of weariness in her eyes–tells us much about the signs we look for to denote motherhood. If haggard eyes is a sign of motherhood, the Virgin-influenced idealized motherhood is certainly absent. Here we take pause because she seems a little too young, maybe a little too innocent, betraying the ways in which we expect mothers to look and feel and act.