A Goat with her Kid

A Goat with her Kid, painted in 1890 and now in the Rijksmuseum, represents Segantini at his most completely Alpine and his Divisionist technique at a relatively mature stage. By 1890 he had moved to Savognino in the Swiss Graubünden, living at altitude among the animals and landscapes he depicted obsessively. Goats were central to Alpine pastoral life — indispensable for milk, meat, and wool in communities where the terrain was too steep for cattle — and Segantini elevated them to subjects of philosophical weight. In this intimate scene the relationship between mother and kid carries the full force of his Schopenhauerian meditation on the Will: life reproducing itself blindly, the tenderness of generation containing within it the knowledge of death. The Rijksmuseum acquisition reflects the early and sustained Dutch interest in Segantini — he had exhibited in Amsterdam and his work was collected by Dutch patrons who responded to his combination of naturalistic observation and

Oil on canvas executed with Segantini's characteristic long, separated brushstrokes of pure or near-pure colour. The technique gives the animals' coats a vibratory, luminous quality impossible to achieve through conventional blending.