Mother and Child c. 1871 - 1872

John Singer Sargent made this pencil drawing, titled "Mother and Child." It's a study in contrasts between form and void, solidity and ephemerality. The composition pivots around a central, weighty cluster: a mother enveloped around her child. Sargent uses dense, layered strokes to convey the voluminous folds of her dress and the intimate embrace. This contrasts sharply with the lone figure to the left, rendered with sparse lines that suggest distance and isolation. Note the use of hatching that creates a sense of depth, particularly in the mother's garments. The formal aspects of the drawing, the artist's deliberate choice of line and shadow, offer not just a visual study of form, but a meditation on the very nature of representation and the emotional weight of human relationships. Sargent destabilizes the conventional, inviting us to consider how the arrangement of line and space can evoke complex feelings of closeness and solitude.