Gathering Fruit

Mary Cassatt

National Gallery of Art

Printed with faint black lines on cream-white paper, a woman standing on a ladder propped against a wall hands fruit down to a nude child held by a second woman in this vertical etching. The women wear long-skirted dresses with long, loose sleeves, and their hair is pulled back in buns at the napes of their necks. The ladder, to our left, leans against vines growing up a wall. The woman standing on the ladder leans and looks down in profile at the child to our right. The child sits facing away from us in the other woman’s arms, bare buns squished along one forearm. The child reaches for the fruit, perhaps a cluster of small grapes. The second woman’s face is hidden by the child’s head. An opening in the wall to the right leads back to an open space.