Art Herstory Christmas Card | Marianne Stokes Madonna and Child

Each year since 2019, Art Herstory has introduced a Christmas and/or holiday card featuring (of course!) a work by a historic woman artist. For the last few years, our holiday cards have featured botanical themes. This. year, we return to the religious theme of our earliest cards.

The 2024 Christmas card features a work by nineteenth-century Austrian-born artist Marianne Stokes (née Preindlsberger; 1855–1927): Madonna and Child. Having studied art in Germany and France, the artist married a British landscape painter; after their marriage, they settled in England but traveled abroad regularly. Stokes’ paintings include portraits and stylized depictions of mythical subjects. The original painting reproduced on this card, Madonna and Child, is held by a UK museum, the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. The sentiment inside the card is “Merry Christmas.”

According to The Catholic Art Company website, “The costume worn by Our Lady is representative of a traditional clothing of Dubrovnik’s woman from the time, and provides a bright focus for Stokes to express her style as a colorist. In the background Stokes surrounds the Holy mother and child with thorny stems foreshadowing the future Passion of Christ, the babe in Her arms.”

Art Herstory holiday cards are larger than Art Herstory note cards. They are A7 format (5×7″). They are available for sale in a 10-pack with holiday-red envelopes, or as individual cards (also with matching envelopes) in an eco-friendly clear sleeve.

To order Art Herstory holiday cards online, visit the Art Herstory Shop or our Etsy store.

Limited quantities of Art Herstory Christmas cards from previous years are still available:

Christmas Roses, by Florence Westwood Whitfield

American holly / Ilex opaca, by Mary Morris Vaux Walcott (American, 1860–1940)

The Nativity of Christ, by Orsola Maddalena Caccia (Italian, 1596–1676)

Adoration of the Magi, by Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593–c.1654)

E. F. Seedling Amaryllis 1819, by Priscilla Susan Bury (British, 1799–1872)