Mother and Child (also Madonna)

"Mother and Child" was completed towards the end of Gebhardt’s life. Perhaps the most complicated years of his life preceded the work. He had worked intensively until then but then he tired, his eyesight deteriorated and in his letters, he complained of exhaustion from working and that he no longer had any ideas for paintings. “The field that I work in is so narrow and I have picked it relatively clean. It simply isn’t permissible to repeat myself if I don’t have anything new to say anymore,” he wrote. Furthermore, Gebhardt lost practically all his property due to inflation and war loans. Thus Gebhardt was nevertheless forced to continue working in order to alleviate his financial difficulties and to fulfil new commissions. For the most part, portraits set the tone for his work in his last years. Gebhardt painted numerous portraits during his lifetime. It is noted that Gebhardt never painted from memory, so to speak, rather he always used models, and he liked to dress them in old-fashioned, even Renaissance era clothing.