Gathering Fruit

Mary Cassatt

National Gallery of Art

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 colored print. The scene is printed with areas of mostly flat color in shades of vivid green, earthy browns, and pastel pinks and blue. The women and child have peachy-toned skin and brown hair. Both women wear long, floral-patterned 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 the verdant green vines growing up the brown wall. The woman standing on the ladder wears a powder-blue dress over an apricot-orange and white patterned kerchief around her neck. She 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 wears rose pink, and her face is hidden by the child’s head. An opening in the wall to the right leads back to an open space with more greenery. The sky above is a strip of topaz blue along the top edge of the print.