Mother Lamenting Over Her Child

During his early career, Agate aspired to historical painting but found portraiture the more stable source of income. In 1834, he departed for Europe. Following a brief visit to Paris he journeyed to Florence where he studied the Old Masters and became increasingly committed to historical painting. While abroad he contracted tuberculosis and returned to America in 1835. After his health was temporarily restored he devoted himself to historical and religious painting. Mother Lamenting Over Her Child was exhibited in the Academy annual of 1828. Its catalogue listing was accompanied by Henry Pickering's lengthy poem "I Thought I Slept," which includes the lines: "My dearest boy! Thy brother does not sleep: Alas! he's dead: he never will awake." The subject of this work would not have surprised its 19th-century audience. The high rate of mortality made it not only an acceptable but also a frequent theme for painting, sculpture, poetry and prose, thus providing collective images of expression for the individual grief so commonly experienced. Mother Lamenting was retained by the artist and his family, until it was given to the Academy in 1940. It is assumed that the work has a factual and personal point of inspiration.