The “Mother and Son” was created by Alexandra Vasilievna Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya during World War I, which could not but be reflected in the work. The glowing figures of mother and son (the mother is even wearing a joyful reddish-pink dress) are densely encircled by disturbing blue-green abstract spots, lines and silhouettes. The lines symbolize the mother’s fears of the unfriendly, unpredictable world that surrounds both figures.

After graduating in 1915 from the First Saint Petersburg Drawing School for Free Comers at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Alexandra Vasilievna joined the artistic movement “World of Art”, and the next year she displayed her works for the first time at the association’s exhibition.

The students communicated with former teachers after graduation. They also liked to gather at Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin’s house. His wife, Renée O’Connell, recalled:

There, at Bilibin’s, Alexandra Shchekatikhina met Nikolai Pototsky. In 1915, they got married, and a year later their son Mstislav, or Slavchik, as everyone called him, was born.

In the presented picture, the mother’s hairstyle — a bun on the top of her head, with a blue ribbon intertwined in it — is too individual for the woman to be fictional. Probably, despite the generality, it is still a self-portrait, although there is no complete clarity on this issue.

The position of the heads and hands of the mother and child resembles the iconography of the Vladimir Mother of God, the famous icon, a sacred Russian treasure. Maximum contact, protection, and the strongest bond between mother and child were clearly manifested in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Alexandra Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya grew up in an Old Believer family, her grandfather Grigory Vasilyevich was an icon painter; he decorated Easter eggs and illustrated religious manuscripts. Russian icons were an integral part of the artist’s painting philosophy, she constantly used icon painting techniques in her work.