New! Greeting Card / Christmas Card – Madonna and Child – folds to 5x7" – With Envelope – 1 / 10 / 50 / 100 – by Albert Edelfelt

This very tender and reverent picture of Mary and Baby Jesus shows them in the stable at Bethlehem, in the still of the evening, with Jerusalem in view behind them. There is a stillness to it, and the attachment between mother and child seems very intense, and very quiet. The blue light over the town has a dreamy, moonlit quality, but the light of love between Jesus, the light of the world, and Mary seems warm and wonderful.

Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (1854–1905) was a prolific painter with a huge reputation. His father had died young, and his widowed mother raised their children under financial strain. He went to a Finnish art school as a teenager, and at age 19 he went to Paris, of course, and studied at the great Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He stayed in Paris for years after that, his realist painting gradually acquiring the softer touches of Impressionism.

He achieved success in the Salons, especially with a painting of Louis Pasteur, which we hope to include later in our Heroes of Catholic Science series. Satrting in the 1880s, Edelfelt was doing pictures of Jesus and Mary. This painting dates to 1895, and has some of that illustration style to it that he'd have in later years. He'd had a very close relation to his mother, who had been widowed as a young woman and raised her children on her own, in difficult circumstances. That relationship presumably influenced his very reverent portrayals of Mary. (source: kansallisbiografia.fi)

You can cut this card and put the picture in a 5x7 frame.

1895. Oil on canvas. 44 x 64 cm. Owned and exhibited by Galeria Rogalińska, an art museum in Rogalin, Poland. It is in the national museum in Poznań.

– 5x7", folded down from10x7".

– Comes with white envelopes

– Satin finish.

– Blank inside

– Gorgeous, classy card for Christmas or any occasion!

Thanks for your interest in our Catholic art!

Thanks!

Sue & John

“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.” ~ St. Pope John Paul II

Original image is out-of-copyright. Descriptive text and image alterations (hence the whole new image) © by Sue Kouma Johnson – Classic Catholic Art.