Georgios Jakobides

Like Nicholas Gysis and Nikiforos Lytras, Jakobides is known to have repeated his most popular compositions. There is at least one other version of the present work, and the image is drawn directly from figures in his beloved masterpiece The Children's Concert.

This work is a quintessential example of French-inspired Impressionism: the loose, hurried brushstrokes and vibrant, varied colours applied side-by-side capture the essence of the subjects, as well as the play of natural light. The more intimate composition and limited figures make this a more contemplative theme, illustrating the joys of motherhood, than The Children's Concert.

Jakobides is best known for his sensitive and often humorous portrayals of children. His observations of everyday life were strongly influenced by the work of the Dutch Golden Age artist Frans Hals, reflected in the intimate yet comical subject matter as well as the sensitivity conveyed through the focused light and in each soft-edged brushstroke. These debts to naturalism and the genre scene were also due to Jakobides' introduction to the work of members of the French Realists and the Barbizon School such as Courbet and Corot, to which he would have been exposed during his time at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

First a student of Nikiforos Lytras at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, Jakobides excelled in portraiture and genre painting. After completing his training in Greece he moved to Munich and studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. There he was influenced by the work of German artists such as Ludwig von Lofftz, Wilhelm Lindenschmidt and Gabriel von Max. By the time he painted the present work, Jakobides occupied a position as director of the new National Gallery in Greece at the invitation of the government, and had recently won a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1900.

Another version of the present work but larger in size is in the collection of Prodromos Emfietzoglou, Athens.