Mother and Child 1908

Mary Cassatt made this pastel drawing, called Mother and Child, sometime in the late 19th century. It depicts a subject that Cassatt returned to repeatedly in her career, the everyday bond between women and children. Cassatt was an American artist working in France, alongside the Impressionists. The image is notable for its seeming artlessness; sketchy and informal. It speaks to the social conditions that shaped artistic production at the time. As a woman, Cassatt was excluded from many of the institutional structures that promoted male artists' careers. She found an alternative path, aligning herself with a progressive group of painters, and finding subject matter in the domestic sphere that was familiar to her. Art historians often use letters, exhibition reviews, and other archival materials to better understand the world in which the artist lived and worked, in order to fully appreciate how an image creates meaning through visual codes, cultural references, and historical associations.