Share

License image

Helen Mabel Trevor , Irish, 1831-1900

Title

The Fisherman's Mother

Date1892

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions

65 x 53 cm

Signedlower right: Helen Mabel Trevor, f.1892

Credit LineBequeathed, the Artist, 1900

Object numberNGI.500

DescriptionThis painting communicates powerfully the high regard in which Helen Mabel Trevor held the Breton people she encountered during her time in France. In a letter home from the town of Douarnenez, Trevor wrote that she was painting an ‘old woman who has five sons, all fishermen’. Though stooped and frail, the woman cuts an imposing figure, and engages the viewer with a fixed, benign expression. Her weathered face and hands testify to a life of toil, while the rosary beads that hang from her fingers point to the religious devotion that was central to life in Breton communities. Many artist-visitors to the region in the second half of the nineteenth century were fascinated by the piety of local people. The woollen shawl (with its hood folded down) that rests heavily on the woman’s shoulders is typical of the region, and of a kind that features in other Breton paintings by Trevor.
Having worked at home for many years, Trevor undertook art training relatively late in life. She studied in London and Paris before visiting Brittany for the first time in 1881. She returned subsequently to France and travelled elsewhere in Europe with her sister. This painting, which suggests the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage, was shown at the Paris Salon in 1893. It is less sentimental in character than many of Trevor’s Breton subjects, particularly those that feature children.

March 2016

ProvenanceBequeathed, Helen Mabel Trevor, 1900 Exhibition HistorySalon, Paris, 1893

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1895

Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 1895

The Peasant in French 19th Century Art, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 1980

The Irish Impressionists, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1984

Irish Women Artists, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1987

Irish Artists in Brittany, Musée de Pont-Aven, 26 June - 27 September 1999
Label TextThis painting reflects visiting artists’ interest in the character, daily lives and customs of the Breton people. Elderly subjects were widely viewed as guardians of tradition and feature prominently throughout the work of European and North American artists who travelled to, and lived in, Brittany in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The religious devotion among local communities, noted by many of these artists, is communicated in this picture by the prominence of the elderly woman’s rosary beads.