Portrait of Reine LeFebvre Holding a Nude Baby

Portrait of Reine LeFebvre Holding a Nude Baby (1902) belongs to Cassatt's late maternal series, depicting a seated woman holding an infant in a composition that revisits the secular Madonna theme she developed throughout the 1890s and 1900s. The nude baby — unusual in Cassatt's work, where infants are more typically clothed — adds a note of classical reference to what is otherwise a warmly contemporary domestic subject. By this date her reputation as the pre-eminent painter of motherhood was international.

The contrast between the clothed adult figure and the nude baby provides tonal and textural variety within an intimate composition. Cassatt renders the baby's skin with the same warm, carefully observed flesh tones she applied to her clothed subjects. The composition is close-cropped and psychologically intimate, with minimal background detail.