{Guest Post} Three Beautiful Images of Motherhood

Hello... This is Leigh here of Marvelous Kiddo guest posting... Every week, I spend a lot of time searching for artwork for my ongoing series of Marvelous Kiddo posts focused on breastfeeding as depicted by famous artists.  There are so many masterpieces out there showing the quiet nuances of motherhood, that I wanted to share a few of them with you.  

These stunning etchings by Mary Cassatt are three of my favorites.  I love that they retain such freshness and immediacy 120 years after they were created.  The gesture and impulse is so lovely and real and they convey such an intense connection between each mother and child, and yet the lines are so direct and clean.  As a mother, these pieces speak to me really profoundly of what it is to raise a child, and the ways in which every little moment of mundane care-taking is also an act of love.  Looking at them, I also feel so powerfully impacted by the sense that all mothers are connected, through time and space, by the instinctive bond we have with our babies.  Don't these three pairs look like they could be any one of us, living in 2011?  

All images by Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926).  Top-bottom: Maternal Caress, 1891, Drypoint and soft-ground etching, third state, printed in color: The Child's Bath, 1890-1891, Drypoint and aquatint: Mother's Kiss, 1890-91, Drypoint and aquatint on laid paper.