Vera based this picture on sketches she had done of a mother and children in Tangiers in March 1911. In July she wrote in her diary: ‘Began painting my big decorative panel which is rather interesting.’ The picture was exhibited at the New English Art Club in November. As Mabel wrote ‘Great news about Vera’s picture Maternity which is splendidly hung and praised in the Times and The Morning Post.’

The Observer (26 November, 1911) commented:

“Miss Vera Waddington’s distinctly post-impressionist decorative panel, “Maternity,” is so concentrated in significant expression, so emphatic in the accentuation of its linear rhythm, so far removed from representation and studio convention, that it might be hailed as a masterpiece were it not for the inconsistent feebleness of certain passages, like the mother’s head-cloth, where she abandons the bold outline which elsewhere encloses and defines her forms like the cloisons of an enamel.”

This was one of the few pictures, we know of, that Vera painted in a more post-impressionist style.