Mary Cassatt - Emmie and Her Child 1889
Emmie and Her Child 1889
88x65cm oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS, US
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Wichita Art Museum:
Of the numerous canvases Cassatt devoted to the mother and child relationship, the Murdock Collections Mother and Child ranks among the finest. In this tranquil scene, a mother tenderly embraces her child, while the child reaches up to caress the mothers chin. The two figures, while clearly painted from actual models, ultimately transcend their specific identities to embody the abstract ideal of the intimate bond between mother and child. The brushwork and spatial conception themselves tend toward abstraction, as if to under score the level of generality to which the image aspires. Cassatt flattens space by cropping the body of the mother, asserting the decorative pattern of her dress, and suppressing spatial recession around her; light-hued background elements, laid in rapidly with sketchy strokes, serve further to flatten the composition and emphasize the picture plane.