123. Charles Maurin, Mother Combing Her Daughter’s Hair

A leading artist during the turn of the century, Charles Maurin was not only a prolific printmaker, draftsman, and painter, but also an innovator. For example, he used an atomizer to spray pigment on the surface of his paper to create what he called peintures au vaporisateur. As a printmaker, his woodcuts were well regarded by members of the avant-garde. His prints put him into close contact with the artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Félix Vallotton, who made sure that Maurin became well versed in the avant-garde publications and exhibitions of the 1890s.

Mother Combing Her Daughter’s Hair focuses on maternal love, a theme that became part of Maurin’s 1901 series “New Sentimental Education” (“La nouvelle éducation sentimentale”), twelve prints dedicated to the special rapport between mother and child. Maurin had explored the subject earlier as well, in his large painting Maternity (1893, fig. 1). During the 1890s, this had also become a signature theme for the American artist Mary Cassatt. In the present drawing, Maurin brought his models very close to the frontal plane of the composition, increasing the viewer’s sense of intimacy and heightening the impact.

Another side of Maurin’s work was the portrayal of sensual nude women, a subject the artist had in common with his friend Rupert Carabin (cat. no. 45), a sculptor. These two dissimilar approaches to intimacy make Maurin an absorbing artist worthy of further study.¹

GPW