Artwork
A Young Italian Woman being Adorned by her Mother
A Young Italian Woman being Adorned by her Mother is an oil painting by Albert Küchler. It dates from 1835 and is held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The painting depicts an intimate domestic scene in which an older woman, identified as a mother, adorns a younger Italian woman, with the two figures positioned within a domestic interior that includes a doorway, chair, fireplace, and dress. According to the catalogue record, the younger woman wears the Ciociaro costume, a traditional regional dress associated with the Ciociaria area south of Rome, signaling her specific Italian cultural identity. The presence of a rooster, also listed among the depicted elements, introduces a rural or household motif commonly tied to Italian peasant life in nineteenth-century European genre imagery.
Together, these elements frame the work as a tender vignette of maternal care and the transmission of feminine tradition, presenting the preparation of a young woman in regional dress as both a personal ritual and a representation of Italian vernacular culture for a foreign audience.
Technique & Style
The work is an oil painting on canvas, measuring 725 mm by 825 mm and dated 1835. It depicts a young Italian woman being adorned by her mother, accompanied by motifs such as a rooster, doorway, chair, dress, fireplace, and a Ciociaro costume, as recorded in the museum's catalog.
History & Provenance
The museum lists the work as part of its permanent holdings, though no specific inventory or accession number is provided in the available records.
Albert Küchler painted A Young Italian Woman being Adorned by her Mother in 1835. The work is executed in oil on canvas and measures 72.5 by 82.5 centimetres. It is held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, where it remains.
The museum lists the work as part of its permanent holdings, though no specific inventory or accession number is provided in the available records. No exhibition history or past loan records are documented in the provided sources.
Context
Albert Küchler's 1835 oil on canvas, A Young Italian Woman Being Adorned by Her Mother, exemplifies the Danish Golden Age painters' fascination with Italian subjects. Like many Danish artists of his generation, Küchler worked for extended periods in Rome, where he produced genre scenes of Italian peasant life rendered with careful attention to regional costume and domestic detail, here evident in the depiction of the rooster, doorway, and fireplace. The work entered the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.
Its formal composition and modest scale are characteristic of the artist's narrative domestic scenes, situating the piece within the broader European genre tradition of the early nineteenth century.
Overview
Albert Küchler, a Danish painter of the Golden Age, completed A Young Italian Woman being Adorned by her Mother in 1835. This oil painting captures an intimate domestic scene, portraying a mother gently arranging her daughter's hair. Both figures are depicted in traditional Ciociaro attire within a warm, inviting interior. The artwork is presently part of the collection at Statens Museum for Kunst.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Albert Küchler, O.F.M. (Danish pronunciation:; 2 May 1803 – 16 February 1886), also known as Peter of Copenhagen, was a Danish painter associated with the Danish Golden Age. He mainly painted genre works and portraits.…
A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)
The Poultryman
Scene from Ludwig Holberg's The Lying-in Room
Laundry
'Good Neighbors'
Woman Baking Pancakes
En fisker viser sin datter en bortsejlende båd
Scene from Ludwig Holberg's The Lying-in Room
A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)
En tjenestepige viser sin kærestes portræt til en grønthandlerske
Una asturiana desplumando un pichón- A Young Italian Woman being Adorned by her Mother