Completed in 2001, Misericordia is inspired by a nineteenth-century novella by the Spanish author Benito Pérez Galdós and, like other works on view, explores the mother-daughter relationship, in this instance against the backdrop of the artist’s own mother’s ailing health and eventual death. Writing in the accompanying publication, Deborah Levy comments, ‘There is rarely one fixed meaning in any image. Rego’s artfulness is to suggest a moment of change or contemplation, or to offer simultaneous narratives to fracture time. This can be seen in the multiple story lines of the Misericordia series… Her gaze on the female body in all phases of life is brutally true and endearingly tender, in this case, the bare-bottomed old women being helped to the bathroom or to get dressed, with the detail of a smart handbag (perhaps a whole abandoned life inside it) resting tragically on a cupboard.’

About the artist

Born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, Dame Paula Rego RA lives and works in London. The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego’s work to date commenced this year at Tate Britain (7 July–24 October 2021) and will travel to Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands (27 November 2021–20 March 2022) followed by Museo Picasso Malagá, Spain.

Other current and recent major solo exhibitions include Museum De Reede, Antwerp, Belgium (30 July–25 October 2021), and Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, curated by Catherine Lampert, which travelled from MK Gallery, Milton Keynes to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2019–2020 and was on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin from September 2020–May 2021. Rego’s work is in the collections of major museums including the British Museum, London, UK; National Gallery, London, UK; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; Tate, UK and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK.