“Mother” Painting by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Reproduction, Collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery

“Mother” by Russian artist Kuzma Petrovich Petrov-Vodkin is painted in the artist’s favourite red colours. It portrays a young peasant class woman, of unremarkable appearance, in whose arms lies an innocent child completely carefree drinking milk from its nursing mother in a Russian hut. 

This figure of a woman unwittingly resembles the Renaissance Madonna. It symbolises motherhood; the giver of life and the source of it, and it personifies love, protection and care that surround and protect not only children, but everything around them.

The artist turned to the theme of motherhood in 1912 after he and his wife tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child. One after another, Petrov-Vodkin would draw pictures depicting motherhood, as his way of asking God for his own happiness. And 10 years after “Mother”, on October 1, 1922, Kuzma Sergeevich’s wife, Mara, finally gives birth to a long-awaited child.