Portrait de ma mère
(Portrait of my mother)

1940, oil painting on canvas, 200 x 100 cm
Coll. Gaston Bertrand Foundation
N° inv. 67

From 1937 to 1946, the artist painted about ten portraits of his mother, as well as various drawings and two woodcuts (xylography). From the outset, he depicted his mother as sorrowful and anxious, like a sign of the tragic ordeals that she had to suffer and that her son could only suffer too. This is a distinctive feature continuously expressed by the artist in his works.
In this respect, the large full-length version of that theme is very eloquent and certainly is the painter’s first masterpiece: an extremely pale face and sharp little hands emerge from the black flat colour representing the coat and the hat. The image of his mother is sharp, fluent and hieratic at the same time, expressing both discretion and solemnity and thus combining two opposite characters which are typical of Bertrand’s figures: presence and mystery.