American Artist MARY CASSATT

The intimacy, tenderness, and close bond of love between mother and child

Two figures, a mother and child, dominate the vertical space. A seated woman wears a casual, homely dress with a white collar and cuffs patterned with simple flower motifs. She is seated in a high-backed wooden chair painted with flower motifs. Her hair is fixed in a bun style. The woman supports and embraces the child and leans down to give a kiss. It’s an intimate and loving moment of mother and child bonding. The child holds the collar of the mother’s dress.

The image is linear in style, evocative of and highly influenced by Japanese prints with flat plains of colour and motifs. There is a lack of natural form or shadows typical of Japanese art. As we can see, the motifs do not follow the curves. They are flat. The boldest colour is from the deep green and red of the chair. The colours are picked up again by the dark green and red flower motifs. The darkest tone is the black hair of the mother and child. These dark colours contrast with the light pale green of the dress and the pale background. A large part of the image is the plain light blue background with its delicate soft powdery blue colour occupying the top third of the image and down the right-hand side. This large flat pale area contrasts with the busy dress focusing the attention on the subject.

The intimacy, tenderness, and close bond of love between mother and child is moving and heart-warming, a unique bond that is not the otherworldliness of religious, spiritual devotion of Renascence art but a beautiful domestic scene of reality. The lines and flower motifs on the dress skip and dance, adding a lively dynamic to the image and contrasting with the stillness of the intimate moment and flat background.

American painter MARY CASSATT, ‘Mother’s Kiss’, 1890-1891. Dry-point and aquatint on laid paper. Colour print, 9×13.75 inches (without frame).