Sometimes mediocre art speaks to us deeply: sometimes we are ashamed that we respond to it. We have to distinguish between basic human sensibility and crass sentimentality.
This is The Widower by Luke Fildes (1875).
It depicts a newly widowed man trying to comfort his dying child. The eldest child is watching quietly, while the youngest play innocently nearby.
Zoom in—how does it make you feel?
#Victorian #history #art #paintings #1800s #death
To me if does feel poignant, if only because it highlights that this was something people must have face far too often before the advent of modern medicine and improved child mortality. It's a window into what we need to be grateful for.
I agree with you, but I also think his technical mastery is undeniable. For me, it’s the execution that impresses me more than the sentimentality of the subject.
Melodrama is often deliberately crude or vulgar because by flattering us that we are smarter than it, and slumming, it allows us to enjoy uncut schlock and pretend we have an ironic relationship to it.
