The Poor Officer's Widow

An Austrian officer who married in the 1830s had to lodge a marriage bond, and the authorities took the view that this sum provided for his widow. She was therefore not entitled to any further pension, and what the bond paid out was usually very little.

Peter Fendi painted what that meant in 1836, and from 1837 the picture belonged to Rudolf von Arthaber, a textile manufacturer whose collection of contemporary art was then the largest in Vienna. A young widow sits in a bare attic on a straw sack that serves as her bed, sewing, perhaps for the children, perhaps for money. Her baby lies asleep on her dead husband's uniform coat, and a second child sleeps against the pillow beside her. Near the baby lie a portrait miniature and a letter, keepsakes of someone she loved.