Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Death of Mother Bloor
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor (1862–1951), whose deathbed portrait Neel likely based on a photograph of her funeral in Life magazine, was one of the first "red" feminists—members of the Communist Party dedicated to the rights of both women and the working class, a rarity at the time. Neel’s painting includes a sea of mourners not found in the original photograph whose diversity attests to Bloor’s work on behalf of a wide-ranging constituency. Neel later commented on the striking similarity between the final work and the tomb of Ermengol VII, Count of Urgell, a Catalonian sculptural ensemble she encountered at The Met Cloisters.