Happy Mother's Day From Mary Cassatt

I have always loved the paintings of Mary Cassatt. She was an American painter who studied with the Impressionists in Paris, and became accepted by them as one of their group. Like John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt painted wonderful pictures of families, and in particular, mothers and children.  She did not have children of her own, and often her paintings of mothers and children were over-sentimentalized.  They are tableaux of perfect children, frozen in time.  Anyone who is a mother knows those moments are fairly rare -- children are usually little balls of energy, always moving.  But the quiet moments are how we remember our children in our mind's eye, and Mary Cassatt managed to capture those moments perfectly.  In this painting, the little girl is holding a dog, and the baby is enchanted with it.  You can see that at any moment, the dog will jump off the stool, the little girl will leap after it, and the baby will clap his hands with joy.  But for just this moment, they are all still and quiet.

To all the mothers and mothers-to-be (you know who you are) HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY.