Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby - Mary Cassatt
Archival giclée
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Description
An intimate pastel study by Mary Cassatt, capturing a tender moment between a mother and her nursing infant with expressive, gestural marks.
Mary Cassatt, an American painter who spent much of her career in France, produced a significant body of work focusing on the private lives of women and children. This pastel drawing, Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby, demonstrates her mastery of the medium. Cassatt utilised the texture of the paper, allowing the warm, neutral tone of the support to function as a mid-tone within the composition. Her application of pastel is both energetic and precise, with visible strokes that define the forms of the mother and child without relying on rigid outlines.
The composition is intimate, focusing on the quiet connection between the figures. The mother, Jeanne, is depicted in a moment of care, her head tilted slightly as she looks down at the infant. Cassatt employed a palette of soft blues, warm oranges, and earthy tones, creating a sense of harmony. The background is suggested through loose, gestural marks, which prevent the image from feeling static. By choosing to focus on domestic scenes, Cassatt provided a view into the social sphere of women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her work often avoids the sentimentality found in other depictions of motherhood from the period, opting instead for a direct, observational approach. The physical presence of the figures is conveyed through the weight of the pastel marks and the deliberate balance of light and shadow across the skin tones. This piece remains a clear example of her technical skill in pastel, a medium she favoured for its immediacy and ability to capture fleeting expressions.
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Because every print is made to order, we don't offer change-of-mind returns, refunds or exchanges. If your order arrives faulty, damaged or incorrect, we'll replace it free of charge — just contact us within 48 hours of delivery. See our refunds page for full details.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
- Framed prints arrive ready to hang
Care & Cleaning
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby - Mary Cassatt
Artist Biography
Mary Cassatt
She grew up in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), in a prosperous family. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she found the instruction restrictive and the male students hostile. She moved to Paris in 1866, copied old masters in the Louvre, and studied privately with several painters before finding her direction with the Impressionists.
Her subject was women and children in domestic settings: mothers bathing infants, women reading, girls at the opera, women having tea. The subject matter sounds conventional. The treatment is not. She observed her subjects with the same unsentimental attention Degas brought to dancers. The compositions are cropped and angled, influenced by Japanese prints and by Degas's habit of painting people from unexpected viewpoints. Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878) shows a child sprawled across a chair with the boredom and physical abandon that adults rarely notice and painters rarely record.
She never married. She was wealthy enough not to need to sell her work. She used her position and her connections to persuade American collectors, particularly the Havemeyers, to buy Impressionist paintings. The Havemeyer collection, much of it acquired on Cassatt's advice, was donated to the Metropolitan Museum. She shaped the taste of American collectors more than any other single individual.
She developed cataracts and was nearly blind by 1914. She stopped painting. She died in 1926, at eighty-two.
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