92

Wille, Bartel van der KooiI (1768-1836)
A mother's joy. Signed and dated W. B. van der Kooi / faciebat 1818. Canvas, 102 × 113 cm.

Leeuwarden, Fries Museum, inv.nr. 1948-72 (on loan from Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, which acquired it in the same way as the preceding entry).

This painting, like the preceding one, has also been brought into connection with French ideals of raising children. Until the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Emile in 1762, sophisticated French mothers avoided giving the breast to their babies. Rousseau's influence helped bring the practice into fashion in those circles. Although in the Netherlands mothers had never stopped breastfeeding their infants, those who subscribed to Rousseau's notions of natural education could now do so with ideological conviction. The manner in which this young mother shows an older child how she gives the breast can itself be interpreted as an application of 'natural' education.

The outspokenly provincial garb of the figures may have been intended by artist and patron to express not just local custom but also the somewhat smug message that plain Frisian mothers were in the possession of truths that French intellectuals had to rediscover with great effort. However, in 1818 there was nothing plain about van der Kooi or his Amsterdam patron.

Boschma 1978, cat.nr. E 251.