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 pale blue mattress. The upholstery on the woman’s chair and the wallpaper behind her are patterned with dusky rose-pink flowers and vines against very pale yellow. The floor is also dark rose pink.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color drypoint, aquatint, and softground etching

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 36.83 × 26.83 cm (14 1/2 × 10 9/16 in.)
    sheet: 42.7 x 31.2 cm (16 13/16 x 12 5/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.2761

  • Catalogue Raisonné

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

Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1950

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt. Rosenwald Collection and gift of Miss Elisabeth Achelis, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1950.

1951

  • Mary Cassatt and her Parisian friends, Pasadena Art Institute, CA, 1951, no. 43.

1960

  • Graphic Masterpieces of Five Hundred Years from the Rosenwald Collection, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 1960.

1967

  • Mother and Child, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada, 1967, no. 33.

1973

  • Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA; Santa Barbara Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA, 1973-1974, no. 24.

1989

  • Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamston, MA, 1989-1990, no. 12-IV, repro.

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.

1996

  • Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Cassatt: A Retrospective. New York: H.L. Levin Associates, 1996, p. 170.

Wikidata ID

Q64960371

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