Dimensions: support: 400 x 330 mm frame: 688 x 622 x 97 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: This is Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's work, titled "Sunday Morning". Editor: It's immediately striking how dark it is, but with this incredible burst of light flooding in through the window. Curator: Alma-Tadema, though known for his portrayals of the classical world, demonstrates here a more domestic scene. Note the woman holding a baby, gazing outwards. Editor: The architecture outside looks like it's from another time, almost dreamlike, and yet this mother and child ground it in the present. Is she hoping for a brighter future? Curator: Perhaps. The image evokes questions about religion and domestic life in Victorian England. Editor: I love how a single window suggests the whole world outside. There is almost an allegorical quality here. Curator: Yes, a very interesting commentary on time, and memory, using such a simple scene. Editor: A poignant moment frozen in time.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/alma-tadema-sunday-morning-n03527
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Although this imaginary scene is set in a Dutch house in the seventeenth century its subject, a new baby in the home, would have been familiar to its Victorian audience. The mother is absent and a midwife holds the new born. Infant and maternal mortality rates were still relatively high in Victorian Britain, but the tranquillity of the scene and the morning light appear reassuring. A woman, dressed in black, is seated next to the midwife, leafing through the pages of a large book. The larger version of the painting, A Birth Chamber, Seventeenth Century (1868), shows the same scene but also includes the mother of the child lying on a bed to the left and her servant seated beside her. Gallery label, August 2018
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