Smiling Mother with Sober Faced Child 1894

Curator: Immediately, the pastel medium lends a softness to this drawing; yet the child’s gaze is almost confrontational. Editor: Today we're looking at Mary Cassatt’s pastel drawing, “Smiling Mother with Sober Faced Child,” created around 1894. It’s currently held in a private collection. Curator: It's striking how the work contrasts the mother's composed demeanor with what seems like the child’s displeasure. Given Cassatt's interest in domesticity, this work complicates traditional representations of motherhood. What kind of labor went into producing these pastels? What materials were used, and where were they sourced, considering Cassatt's social class and access? Editor: Absolutely. Considering the context, it's intriguing how Cassatt subverts idealized mother-child portrayals, a common subject matter for female artists aiming to gain institutional acceptance and sell to a bourgeoise demographic. The child, perhaps unwilling, is juxtaposed against the smiling mother. Could it be an artistic intervention hinting at the constraints placed upon women in society? Curator: Perhaps it's not just about social constraint, but about material conditions: Cassatt’s decision to use pastel allowed her for faster work, and potentially for greater marketability; pastel was popular amongst women artists. This raises questions about the artistic labour that goes into negotiating aesthetic choice with marketability within the gallery system. Editor: That's interesting. Her commitment to depicting women and children placed her art within a certain visual vocabulary. Despite breaking from conventional expectations by showing, maybe not the perfect moment, still she was tied to her historical context and public expectation of art. Her artistic vision still challenged some of these deeply ingrained biases. Curator: Indeed, even the paper’s tooth impacts how the pastel adheres, dictating the level of detail achievable. The consumption of this artwork relies on the materials available at the time and the techniques available, directly related to how these shaped her artwork and reception by others. Editor: In this dialogue we begin to uncover layers: from her aesthetic decisions that might make audiences question accepted beliefs to how Cassatt operated in art networks with her tools, techniques and materials available for sale or purchase at the time in her historical environment.