Woman Sitting with a Child in Her Arms
Cassatt, Mary
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Alternative Title
Mother Holding a Child in Her Arms
Description
Acquired by the Diputación Foral (Provincial Council) of Bizkaia for the Museum on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture held in Bilbao in 1919, this work is one of American painter Mary Cassatt’s finest creations and one of the most unusual examples of impressionist painting in the Museum’s collection. The theme is motherhood, which Cassatt returned to frequently from 1880 and 1890 on. Some researchers see this insistence as the result of a personal frustration.
The child - the main protagonist of the picture - rests his head and arm on the shoulder of a woman who sits in a chair with her back to the spectator. The pinkish flesh tones of the boy’s naked body contrast with the white and blue tones used in the chair and the woman’s dress. Behind and to the left of the main figure, a jug in a washbasin, ready for the child’s bath, is set against a blank wall painted in grey and ochre strips. This intimate family scene, which gives an impression of cleanliness and pulchritude, is handled in deliberately sketchy, unfinished fashion, with a limited range of whites and pinks and little touches of blue to highlight forms and shadow. full view
Type of Work
Oil paintingSubject
Children, Mothers, Chairs, Pitchers, Male nude in art, Women in art, Impressionism (Art)
Rights Statement
All rights reserved
Item is Part of
121996