Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby 1908

Mary Cassatt made this pastel drawing, titled Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby, sometime in her career. There's a real tenderness in the marks Cassatt makes. You can almost feel the pastel stick moving across the paper. It's not about perfection; it's about capturing a moment, a feeling. The colors are muted, mostly soft pinks and blues, but there are these bursts of orange that give it life. The texture is everything here. The way Cassatt layers the pastel creates a soft, almost fuzzy surface. Look at the mother's face, how she uses short, broken lines to define her features. It's not about realism; it's about suggestion. And those orange scribbles behind her? They could be anything – a blanket, a wall, or just pure emotion. They remind me a little of the energy in a Cy Twombly piece, but with so much more intimacy. Cassatt really was one of a kind, wasn't she?