This descriptive text responds to the painting ‘Mother in Bed’ by Austrian painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, which was put on display at Kettle’s Yard Museum in Cambridge as part of their House Guests exhibition.
On a clear spring afternoon, light floods through windowpanes washing the surfaces throughout Kettle’s Yard with a warm glow. Through the cottage and up to the top of the staircase, we come to Helen Ede’s sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom. Mrs. Ede was a private woman; it was not very often that she engaged with visitors, therefore her bedroom and bathroom were the only spaces of the house that remained closed to guests during the years of the Ede’s residence. The intimate, contemplative atmosphere of Helen’s bedroom is now disrupted by the intrusion of a houseguest, Henriette von Motesiczky, invited posthumously to spend some time in the private quarters of the lady of the house.
A jarring depiction of the painter’s aged mother, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky’s Mother in Bed captures the essence of the deathbed: fragility, vulnerability, and regression to a near child-like semblance. That warm spring sunlight is now stifled by the subject’s opaque, lifeless eyes, and the harmonious energy of Helen’s bedroom is altered by Henriette’s ominous presence, hanging leaden above the bed.
To come within inches of this painting is to come within inches of eternal rest. Focusing attention on the familiar face of her mother, knowing this will likely be her final sitting, the artist tells the merciless truth of death. Motesiczky colours the canvas in drab, muted tones that suggest quietus, portraying her mother’s likeness with great detachment. But what constitutes likeness? Are the dying more or less like themselves in their final hours? The essence of a person reduced to a mere image, is it not inhumane? Can an image invoke the former self of the deceased? The spirit of Henriette von Motesiczky is very much present, despite the somber nature of the work. Her strength, her vibrancy, and her ardor are all concealed in the shadowy undertones of this final portrait.
In paintings, as in life, pigments discolour, images fade, and the presence of the woman in the portrait who has retreated into herself reminds us that in our inevitable absence, we will become part of the texture of the world. Death is an illumination, full of light and beauty, and in Helen’s bedroom, we are not in a room with death; we are in a room with love, amongst the memory of one of the most powerful familial relationships, that of mother and daughter.
