Depicting a mother clasping her cherubic child and gently kissing her fleshy cheek, this pastel is a classic example of Cassatt’s intimate depictions of mother and child from the 1880s onwards. Through gesture, gaze, and facial expression, Cassatt succeeds in capturing the delicate subtleties of psychology and emotion exchanged between a mother and her newborn. Executed in her identifiable, kaleidoscopic palette, Cassatt layers gestural strokes of pastel with frenetic hatching and sections of rubbing, a dynamic combination that animates the work’s entire surface. This is the third, and superior example, in a series of four pastels of the same title and subject from 1897. The second is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art.