Mother and Child (Baby Getting Up from His Nap)

Mother and Child (Baby Getting Up from His Nap) (1899, Metropolitan Museum of Art) captures a specific transitional moment — the sleepy, disoriented instant of waking — that distinguishes it from Cassatt's more conventionally tender mother-and-child compositions. Her ability to observe and record precise physical and psychological states in children, without the sentimentality that characterized much commercial art of the period, was one of the qualities most admired by critics. Degas praised her ability to render children's specific, unposed behavior with the same seriousness he brought to his dancers.

The sleeping or waking baby's relaxed, ungainly body provides an informal counter to the supportive mother's more composed posture. Cassatt renders the child's specific physical state — the heaviness of sleep, the incomplete arousal — with close observation. Warm flesh tones and soft domestic light create an intimate, un-posed atmosphere.