The Motherland

Bouguereau called this one Alma Parens, Latin for the nourishing mother, and painted her as a calm woman in a laurel crown with a crowd of small children pressed around her lap and knees. It reads as an allegory of the homeland gathering and feeding its own. He made it in 1883, 12 years after France had lost the war with Prussia and, with it, the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. In those years the figure of the motherland carried real political weight, and images of a strong, protective France were everywhere. Bouguereau was then at the top of the official art world, the Salon favourite whose polished surfaces the young Impressionists were reacting against. He showed the picture at the Salon of 1883. It passed into private hands and still belongs to a private collection, which is why it is seen far less than his name once was.