An Italian Contadina and Her Children

Charles Lock Eastlake's An Italian Contadina and Her Children, painted in 1823, depicts a rural Italian mother and children during the artist's formative years in Rome. Eastlake later became one of the most influential figures in British art as president of the Royal Academy and first director of the National Gallery, but his early career was spent painting Italian genre scenes and banditti subjects. His Italian paintings reveal the Romantic fascination with Mediterranean peasant life.

The oil on canvas shows Eastlake's accomplished academic technique with warm, Italian-influenced coloring and careful figure drawing. The naturalistic rendering of the figures and the atmospheric landscape background demonstrate his study of both contemporary French and Old Master Italian painting.