Young Woman with Child
Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
image: 29.9 x 24.7 cm (11 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.) sheet: 34.8 x 29 cm (13 11/16 x 11 7/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
Accession Number
2012.92.725
Art Historical Context
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's *Young Woman with Child*1923) captures a tender moment in the German Expressionist's later oeuvre. A founding member of the Die Brücke, Kirchner pioneered bold, distorted forms and vivid emotional intensity to convey inner turmoil amid early 20th-century upheaval. By 1923, exiled in the Swiss Alps after personal struggles, he turned increasingly to prints, blending raw energy with introspective calm. This intimate drypoint etching depicts a mother and child in a style evoking quiet humanity, contrasting his earlier frenetic urban scenes. Drypoint, Kirchner's favored me...
About the Artist
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner · 1880–1938
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born on May 6, 1880, in Aschaffenburg, Germany, to parents Ernst and Maria Kirchner, part of a family of Prussian descent that frequently relocated due to his father's career as a chemical technician. After early schooling in various towns, he studied architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Dresden from 1901 to 1905, taking courses i...