Detail of Mother and Child (Baby Getting up from a Nap) by Mary Cassatt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2013

Title: Mother and Child (Baby Getting Up from His Nap)

Artist: Mary Cassatt (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1844–1926 Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise)

Date: ca. 1899

Culture: American

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 36 1/2 x 29 in. (92.7 x 73.7 cm)

Credit Line: George A. Hearn Fund, 1909

Accession Number: 09.27

This painting focuses on the bond between mother and child, which became Cassatt’s specialty after about 1890. The artist translated the popular Impressionist subject of adult female bathers into genteel maternal terms: instead of washing herself, a beautifully dressed woman washes her child. The blond, blue-eyed toddler is said to have been a boy named Jules, one of Cassatt’s frequent models. The canvas, with its rich color and unconventional treatment of space, was the first by Cassatt to enter the Metropolitan’s collection.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10400