Mary Cassatt, domesticity, intimacy and love.

MARY CASSATT, ‘Mother’s Kiss’, 1890-1891. Drypoint and aquatint on laid paper.

Color print, 9×13.75 inches (without having frame).

Two figures, a mother and youngster, dominate the vertical room. A woman in a casual, homely dress with a white collar and cuffs, the costume adorned with basic flower motifs, is seated on what appears to be a significant-backed wooden chair, painted also with flower motifs. She has her hair fastened up in a bun style. The baby is nude with a great crop of hair. The lady cradles and embraces and leans down to kiss the kid. The supported boy or girl retains the collar of the mother’s dress, the other arm is unseen. The qualifications is basic and devoid of any further more facts.

The picture is linear in style, evocative of and really influenced by Japanese prints with flat plains of color and motifs. We see, normally a lack of purely natural variety or shadows, typical of Japanese artwork. As we can see, the motifs do not comply with type and are flat. The strongest colour is from the deep green and crimson of the chair with the colors remaining picked up by the darkish eco-friendly and purple flower motifs of the costume. The darkest colour is the black hair of mom and boy or girl. These darkish colors distinction with the light-weight pale eco-friendly of the dress and the pale powdery blue of the track record. A large element of the picture is the basic mild blue color occupying the top rated 3rd of the picture and down the right-hand side. This huge flat pale region will make the subject matter stand out and focuses the subject.

The intimacy, tenderness and shut bond of adore between mom and kid are going and coronary heart-warming, a special bond but it is not the otherworldliness of spiritual non secular devotion that we discover in Renascence artwork but a attractive domestic scene of reality. The strains and flower motifs on the gown skip and dance give a lively dynamic to the picture which contrasts with the stillness of the personal moment and flat history.