Mater Triumphalis

In 1915, with Britain and France fighting side by side, the Australian-born mining financier Edmund Davis gave this canvas to the Musée du Luxembourg, the Paris museum for living artists. Annie Swynnerton had painted it 23 years earlier, and its Latin title means the triumphant mother. The figure stands alone on a tall, narrow canvas, her arms raised to her head and her eyes closed. At her feet sits a gilded dish of what look like pomegranate seeds, an old emblem of fertility, and a few small shells lie on the sand beside it. The picture had first been shown at the New Gallery in London in 1893. From the Luxembourg it passed through the Louvre and the national museum of modern art before reaching the Musée d'Orsay in 1977.