Included are portraits such as the etching, “Self Portrait at the Table” by Käthe Kollwitz, depicting herself momentarily looking up from her work to gaze directly at the viewer. In “Woman Resting Her Head on Her Hands,” Titina Maselli’s pen and ink drawing takes up the entire picture plane, making a powerful portrait with patterning and strong textural blocks.
Alice Neel’s “Mother and Child” is a self-portrait holding her daughter; a bittersweet painting remembering Neel’s one-year-old child that died. Neel paints the park they are visiting with a bleak background in the dead of winter; two bare trees frame the figures seated on a park bench. Neel posed the mother holding the child in a way that is reminiscent of historical depictions of the virgin and child.