The Young Mother: sheet of studies

Ford Madox Brown

Date: 1848

Materials: Black and white chalk

Two delightful drawings for an oil of a mother and child are in the Birmingham collection: a quick but vivid full-length sketch and this more careful but equally tender sheet of studies. These were presumably made on 13 October 1848, when Brown recorded in his diary: "sent for Mrs. Ashley and child, and began a sketch of them for a little picture of mother and child".

A small, intimate painting of a mother and child, accompanied by a dog, was variously called 'The Infant's Repast', 'Mother and Child' or, as exhibited at the British Institution in 1851, 'The Young Mother'; a replica of the subject in oils is at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton.