Curators’ Pick: Baby Charles Looking Over His Mother’s Shoulder (No. 3) by Mary Cassatt
Mint Museum Senior Curator of American Art, Jonathan Stuhlman, PhD, discusses Mary Cassatt’s Baby Charles Looking Over His Mother’s Shoulder (No. 3). Painted at the turn of the 20th century, this is a striking image of the artist’s best-known subject: the intimate relationship between mothers and children. It is even more noteworthy for its combination of distinctive features: the unusual pose of the sitters, the use of a mirror to reveal the face of the mother whose back is turned to the viewer, the tightly-compressed space of the composition, and the expansive use of the color. These qualities distinguish it from many other treatments of the subject by the artist.