Nurse and Child

Mary Cassatt

Pastel on wove paper (originally blue), mounted on canvas

Worcester Art Museum

Nurse and Child is a pastel on wove paper in which Mary Cassatt depicts a caregiver holding a young child in close, tender proximity. The nurse's calm, attentive face is rendered with soft, feathery pastel strokes, while the child gazes upward in an expression of trust — a composition that epitomizes Cassatt's deeply observed yet unsentimental approach to domestic life. Cassatt, an American expatriate working in Paris and the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists, built her reputation on rigorously drawn, tenderly observed images of women and children, frequently employing paid models rather than actual mothers to explore the theme of caregiving with quiet candor. The 1890s were her most creatively fertile decade, during which she excelled in pastel as a medium — cultivated under the influence of Edgar Degas — for its spontaneity, luminosity, and extraordinary range of color.