Children in a Garden (The Nurse)

Mary Cassatt became well-known for her depictions of women and children in domestic settings. Children in a Garden (The Nurse) is the first major outdoors Impressionist painting, and it is one of her early masterpieces. She included it in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886 and in her first major U.S. solo exhibition in 1895. The painting shows a nursemaid knitting while seated on a bench in a flower-bordered garden. One of her charges sleeps in a nearby carriage; the other plays at her feet. As with much of Cassatt’s work, this scene offers an intimate glimpse into the private lives of the subjects. It manages to portray the charm of children and babies without the sentimentality of many other paintings of the time. Unusual for Cassatt, however, is the work’s looser application of paint, its off-center composition, and its emphasis on landscape. The bright sunlight knits the composition together; brilliant colors sweep through the canvas. The expertly articulated figures show the artist’s disciplined draftsmanship and her ability to make them lifelike through careful dabs of paint. Take, for example, the details of the sleeping baby: the slightly downturned mouth of the baby, along with its hand nestled against its face for comfort.