Maternal Caress

1890-1891

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

We look slightly down onto a young woman sitting in an upholstered chair and tightly hugging a nude, blond child in this vertical, colored print. Both have pale, peach-toned skin. The woman’s black hair is pulled back though a couple tendrils curl on her forehead. Her eyes are downcast and her pink lips parted. She wears a long, cream-white dress dotted with blush-pink, petal-like forms. One arm is under the baby’s chubby bottom and the other braces the child behind the shoulders. The baby wraps their arms around the woman’s neck so they are cheek to cheek. The chair sits in front of a bed with a boxy frame and a pillowy white mattress. The upholstery on the woman’s chair and the wallpaper behind her are patterned with dusky rose-pink flowers and vines against butter yellow. The floor is coral orange. The artist signed the print in graphite under the lower right corner, “Mary Cassatt.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color drypoint, aquatint, and softground etching on wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Miss Elisabeth Achelis

  • Dimensions

    plate: 36.4 x 26.4 cm (14 5/16 x 10 3/8 in.)
    sheet: 42.5 x 31.4 cm (16 3/4 x 12 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1942.6.33

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Mathews and Shapiro 1989, no. 12, vi/vi


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Elisabeth Achelis (1880-1973), New York (Lugt 824b)

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1963

  • American Artists as Print Makers, Westmoreland County Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 1963, no. 45.

1983

  • Graphic Survey Show, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., July 1983.

2009

  • The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2009, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1979

  • Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, no. 150, iii/iii.

1989

  • Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, no. 12, vi/vi.

1999

  • Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History, vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall, 1999, p. 1019, fig. 27.59.

2009

  • Munroe, Alexandra. The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989. Exh. cat. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009, pl. 15.

Inscriptions

recto: below image at right in graphite: Mary Cassatt; verso: at lower left in graphite in later hand: A81689; at lower right in graphite in later hand: FVX / [indecipherable] 8067 / [indecipherable] c o u

Markings

recto: none; verso: Elisabeth Achelis (Lugt 824b) and National Gallery of Art

Watermarks

none

Wikidata ID

Q64960323


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