Children under a Red Umbrella

In Henry Mosler’s painting, two girls and a boy in traditional dress are homeward bound from school, sheltered from a spring shower by an oversized, battered red umbrella. A contemporary review of the painting referred to it as Small-town Students being Accompanied Home by an Older Sister in the Rain, suggesting that the taller of the girls, who holds the umbrella and is the only one of the three figures to look directly at the viewer, is not a student but her younger siblings’ chaperone. Her ruffled collar may indicate her mature status, while her bag bearing books and a slate is perhaps a burden she has assumed for her little sister. Her brother, meanwhile, indicates his affectionate reliance on his elder by leaning his head on her shoulder as he walks by her side. The three are headed away from a steepled building, presumably their school, visible in the right distance. Their faces glow pink in the filtered light of the umbrella, while the brightening sky, the bright light cast on their clothing, and the wildflowers along their path on the left hint at better weather ahead, a metaphor for their release from the constraint of studies.

Children under a Red Umbrella is the only surviving genre scene, or image of everyday life, that Mosler produced during the two years he spent in Düsseldorf, Germany, between 1863 and 1865. Although an established painter in his adopted American hometown of Cincinnati, Mosler had come to the German art center to further his studies. The naturalistic detail and narrative emphasis of this work, as well as its focus on everyday, local life, demonstrate the influence of his teachers at the Düsseldorf Academy. The theme of children, also prominent in contemporary German genre painting, would become important in Mosler’s work after his return to Cincinnati, with the births of his own children.

Painted at the close of America's Civil War, Mosler's painting heralded the therapeutic embrace of themes of wholesome childhood that soon followed the war, as demonstrated, for example, in John George Brown's painting Picnic Party in the Woods, (TF 1994.1) also in the Terra Foundation's collection. While Mosler would soon abandon the overt sentimentality that characterizes Children under a Red Umbrella, this work anticipated the major direction of his work: the portrayal of scenes of French peasant life rendered with a mixture of timeless ideality and exacting specificity based on firsthand observation and the use of authentic artifacts as studio props.

Domestic Bliss: Family Life in America, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–June 22, 1997.

Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820–1920 (The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001. [exh. cat.]

A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2002–February 16, 2003.

Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819–1918, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany (organizer). Venue: Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany, September 23, 2011–January 23, 2012. [exh. cat.]

Gilbert, Barbara C. Henry Mosler Rediscovered: A Nineteenth-Century American-Jewish Artist. Los Angeles, California: Skirball Museum/Skirball Cultural Center, 1995. Text pp. 32, 34, 132; fig. 13, p. 35 (black & white).

Baumgärtel, Bettina, ed. Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819–1918, Vol. I–II. (exh. cat., Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany). Düsseldorf: Museum Kunstpalast, 2011. (German version). Text Vol. II, p. 437; ill. cat. no. 371, p. 437 (color).

Baumgärtel, Bettina, ed. The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its International Influence 1819–1918. (exh. cat. Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany). Düsseldorf: Museum Kunstpalast, 2011. (English version). Ill. cat. no. 184, p. 319, (color).