The Return from the Christening

Hubert Salentin (1822-1910) was born in Zülpich. He became the pupil of Wilhelm Schadow (1788-1862), Carl Ferdinand Sohn (1805-1867), appointed Director of the Kunstakademie in 1826, and Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876) in Düsseldorf. He subsequently definitively settled in Düsseldorf where he specialised in genre paintings. He won a medal in Vienna in 1873.

This painting is a fine example of Salentin's genre scenes of the rustic life in West Germany. It depicts a young mother in traditional costume with her new born child in her arms leaving the church after the baptism. This painting is characteristic of the Düsseldorf school, one of the main artistic centres in 19th-century Germany, which favoured an extreme naturalness of representation and carefully staged compositions. The subject matter derived here from the Biedermeier painters who praised sentimental and anecdotal genre scenes.