Mother and Child Reading 1913

Mary Cassatt created this tender pastel drawing, Mother and Child Reading, with soft colours and lots of gentle marks. You can imagine the way she layered the pastels, one on top of the other, to create these blended hues, almost like veils of colour settling on the paper. I wonder if Cassatt was thinking about how she could evoke not just the image of a mother and child, but the feeling of being held, comforted, and loved. The child's pink dress, with its delicate strokes of lavender, feels so soft you want to reach out and touch it. The green of the mother's dress, punctuated with little bursts of yellow, suggests a feeling of groundedness, like nature itself. And the way the arms wrap around the child - a universal gesture, connecting Cassatt to other artists who explored the theme of motherhood, like Paula Modersohn-Becker or Alice Neel. These artists were all in conversation, not only with each other but with us, each adding their own brushstroke to the ongoing story of what it means to be human.