Care, nursing, and compassion

Featured Artworks

The Cradle

Berthe Morisot (1872)

Berthe Morisot’s The Cradle turns a quiet nursery into a scene of vigilant love. A gauzy veil, lifted by the watcher’s hand, forms a protective boundary that cocoons the sleeping child in light while linking the two figures through a decisive diagonal [1][2]. The painting crystallizes modern maternity as a form of attentiveness rather than display—an unsentimental icon of care.

Sunflowers

Vincent van Gogh (1888)

Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) is a yellow-on-yellow still life that stages a full cycle of life in fifteen blooms, from fresh buds to brittle seed heads. The thick impasto, green shocks of stem and bract, and the vase signed “Vincent” turn a humble bouquet into an emblem of endurance and fellowship [1][2].

The Boating Party

Mary Cassatt (1893–1894)

In The Boating Party, Mary Cassatt fuses intimate caregiving with modern mobility, compressing mother, child, and rower inside a skiff that cuts diagonals across ultramarine water. Bold arcs of citron paint and a high, flattened horizon reveal a deliberate Japonisme logic that stabilizes the scene even as motion surges around it [1]. The painting asserts domestic life as a public, modern subject while testing the limits of Impressionist space and color.

The Child's Bath

Mary Cassatt (1893)

Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath (1893) recasts an ordinary ritual as modern devotion. From a steep, print-like vantage, interlocking stripes, circles, and diagonals focus attention on touch, care, and renewal, turning domestic labor into a subject of high art [1][3]. The work synthesizes Impressionist sensitivity with Japonisme design to monumentalize the private sphere [1][2].

Irises

Vincent van Gogh (1889)

Painted in May 1889 at the Saint-Rémy asylum garden, Vincent van Gogh’s Irises turns close observation into an act of repair. Dark contours, a cropped, print-like vantage, and vibrating complements—violet/blue blossoms against yellow-green ground—stage a living frieze whose lone white iris punctuates the field with arresting clarity [1][2].

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Vincent van Gogh (1890)

Portrait of Dr. Gachet distills Van Gogh’s late ambition for a modern, psychological portrait into vibrating color and touch. The sitter’s head sinks into a greenish hand above a blazing orange-red table, foxglove sprig nearby, while waves of cobalt and ultramarine churn through coat and background. The chromatic clash turns a quiet pose into an empathic image of fragility and care [1][2].