Maternal Caress
1890–91
Medium
Color aquatint and drypoint, with softground, on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 36.8 × 26.8 cm (14 1/2 × 10 9/16 in.); Sheet: 43.2 × 30.1 cm (17 1/16 × 11 7/8 in.)
Classification
drypoint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
13531
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Mary Cassatt began a series of ten color prints in 1890 that were intended for an 1891 exhibition at the influential Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. These prints exemplify the influence of Japanese color woodblock printmaking on her choice of composition, subject matter, and technique. In Maternal Caress, Cassatt portrayed a woman embracing her infant child. She rendered the figures and furniture as simplified, flattened shapes to allow the decorative elements—such as the floral patterns on the ch...
About the Artist
Mary Cassatt · 1844–1926
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Born to a wealthy Pennsylvania family, she defied social conventions to pursue art professionally, settling permanently in Paris where Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist group in 1877. Her paintings of mothers and children—rendered with Impre...