Baby John with Forefinger in His Mouth 1910

Mary Cassatt made this pastel drawing of a mother and child. The strokes are soft, chalky, and floaty, almost vibrating with feeling. The colours feel intimate. I can imagine Cassatt in the studio, building up the image in layers with these sticks of pure pigment, deciding how the peach of the baby’s skin rubs up against the yellow of the mother's robe, or the cool blue shadows of the cloth bundle. Look at the baby’s hand, how it delicately meets his face. There’s an incredible softness to it, a kind of searching tenderness. The mother’s face is full of love. The whole scene feels so fleeting and intimate, like a moment snatched from real life. Cassatt was part of the Impressionist circle in Paris, so she was in dialogue with artists like Degas and Monet who were also trying to capture the immediacy of everyday experience. It's like they all knew that painting wasn’t about capturing one single truth, but about an ongoing process of exchange and invention. And like them, she really knew how to make marks breathe.