  About the Artwork
  
  
  Josef Israëls chronicled everyday routines of poor fishing communities to convey their inherent dignity. In The Cottage Madonna, he rendered a barefoot peasant woman feeding her child in a modest Dutch interior, equipped with a fireplace and a foot warmer. A chaplet cross hung against the plain mantel cloth alludes to a Christian image of Mary as a nurturing mother and symbolizes piety.
Israëls, who was known under the moniker “Dutch Millet,” based this composition partly on the print La Bouille (1861) by French artist Jean-François Millet. Millet popularized peasant subjects in European art of the second half of the nineteenth century and was highly respected in the artistic circles of The Hague.
  
  
  Title
  The Cottage Madonna
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1867
  
  Artist
  Josef Israëls
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1824-1911
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Dutch
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 53 × 39 1/4 inches (134.6 × 99.7 cm)
  Framed: 69 3/8 × 56 1/2 × 5 1/2 inches (176.2 × 143.5 × 14 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Modern Art to 1970
  
  
  Credit
  Bequest of Nell Ford Torrey
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  59.117
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
