One cradle, four ways of drawing near

The newborn is almost hidden. In the painting Albert Anker creates in 1867, the cradle draws the eye with its whiteness, but the baby does not offer a grand portrait. Its brothers and sisters give the arrival its visible form. Around the linen, each finds a place and a way of approaching. The subject lies less in a spectacular event than in this shared effort to see someone still tiny. The painting takes time for this encounter without needing a word.

The MCBA connects the work's date with the birth of Ruedi, the painter's son. This association does not make every figure an identified portrait or the room a certain address. It simply gives the painting a closeness to Anker's family experience. The work presents an interior scene with four children gathered near the cradle and a mother still in bed at the back. Viewers thus see two spaces within the same event: the contained excitement around the little one and the bedroom where rest remains necessary.

Looking at the work — The institutional reproduction shows a boy on the left, an older girl in the centre, a smaller child between them and a little fair-haired child on the right. The wicker cradle occupies the entire width of the foreground. Hands approach its edges and linen; in the background, a face appears on the pillow. Brown, blue and red clothes surround the white fabric without competing with its light. The framing brings the bodies close but allows their attitudes to remain clearly distinct.

We can follow the painting through hands rather than faces. Some lean for support, another gently moves fabric aside, others remain near the body. The gestures trace different distances from the cradle. The viewer's gaze connects them and reconstructs a movement, from the child who can see easily to the smallest who must stretch upwards. Nothing allows us to assign an inner speech to each child. Yet the way they stand is enough to make us feel the newness gathering the siblings around the same point.

This attention to gestures rests on a comparable attention to things. The wickerwork, clothes, fabrics and small bedroom objects provide the group with a concrete environment. The Centre Albert Anker still preserves a collection from his studio, including painting equipment, props and many objects. This heritage helps explain the importance of the material world in his work, without proving that any particular one of these objects was used here. Looking at an interior, for Anker, also means looking at what allows bodies to live within it.

The painting soon leaves the circle of its subject. It is shown at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867, then at Lausanne's Musée Arlaud in 1869. François Bocion assists with its acquisition, and the Société vaudoise des beaux-arts donates it to the museum. It is the first Anker work to enter this collection. The journey is remarkable: a family bedroom becomes an image submitted to exhibition judgement, then a painting that visitors can encounter together. Its intimacy has not prevented its public life; it has provided its substance.

The curator Léon de la Cressonnière recommends the acquisition, emphasising in particular the quality of the figures and colour. The painting can thus serve young artists who come to study in the museum. This function gives the children's gestures another significance. We see an apprenticeship in closeness around the cradle, while the painting itself enters a place for learning how to look. The two experiences answer one another without becoming the same: the children try to glimpse the baby; future painters can study how Anker makes their different approaches legible.

Today, it remains tempting to seek the newborn's face to check that we have indeed seen the announced subject. The detour through the other figures shows why this check is insufficient. The baby is at the centre of a network of gazes, hands, fabrics and positions. Its arrival is measured by everything that has moved closer to it. Leaving the painting, we retain less a face than a group in the process of adjusting. Anker has painted the birth of a presence; around it, a family learns to compose a new circle.