Young Mother Sewing

Mary Cassatt

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Young Mother Sewing depicts a woman absorbed in her needlework while a young girl leans comfortably against her mother's knees, gazing directly at the viewer. The mother wears a striped dress covered by a green apron that harmonizes with the lawn visible through the window behind them, and a vase of orange flowers rests on a chest of drawers in the background. Executed in oil on canvas with the luminous color and informal naturalism characteristic of French Impressionism, the work reflects Cassatt's sustained focus, from around 1890 onward, on intimate scenes of women and children in domestic settings. As the only American and one of very few women to exhibit with the French Impressionists, Cassatt brought a distinctly modern sensibility to the age-old subject of mother and child, rendering it with an unposed, psychologically immediate quality that distinguished her from her contemporaries.