ITALIAN MOTHER AND CHILD.

[Date of birth is incorrect. Annie born 1844.]

Photos: Jonathan Russell.

  • Title(s): Italian Mother and Child (plaque on frame).
  • Description: A scene depicting a young Italian mother in simple peasant dress, sitting in an ivy covered archway with a small child standing on her lap. The woman, sitting on the left, wears a white headdress with a white blouse and skirt, a dark garment covering part of her lap. The child is dressed in a blue dress with a white undergarment and a gold medallion necklace around her neck. The mother supports her child with her left hand, holding the child’s right hand with her right. In the background there is a Romanesque church with mosaics of saints between the windows, and roundels with blue decoration along the top of the building. A tiled roof slopes down from the building on the right with trees behind. (Manchester Art Gallery). There is a lizard on the wall just above the woman’s right shoulder. The paint application by the woman’s knee is a discordant at knee-level as if the area was being reworked and left unfinished.] The figures
  • Media: oil on canvas (Manchester Art Gallery).
  • Dimensions: “framed: 13.6 cm (depth); 150 cm (height); 98 cm (width). / unframed: 125.8 cm (height); 73.5 cm (width).” (Manchester Art Gallery.)
  • Signature/date/other text: “Signed brc: Annie L. Robinson / Roma 1886” (Manchester Art Gallery).
  • History:
    • 1886 – Signed and dated.
    • 1936 – Bequeathed to Manchester Art Gallery by Mrs Louisa Mary Garrett. [Note by painting at 2018-2019 exhibition stated “Gift of Thomas Gough 1928.5”.]
    • May 1938 – Exhibited Manchester Art Gallery, ‘Manchester in Nineteenth Century Pictures and Records’.
    • 2018-2019 – Exhibited Manchester Art Gallery.
  • Location: Manchester Art Gallery.

Notice by painting while on display at the Painting Light and Hope exhibition, 2018-2019: “The figures are posed in an arch of the walled Campo Verano cemetery that overlooks the Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls* in Rome.” [* Basilica Papale di San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, about 2¾ km (1¾ miles) ENE of the Colusseum.] Note on the precise location here.

There are obvious similarities to Annie’s Woman with an infant and young girl – the background building and the stance of the child:

Page last updated 14 May 2025.