Caresse Maternelle

A little girl kneels in her mother's lap with her arms round her neck, cheek pressed to cheek. Cassatt painted it around 1902 at her house in the country north-west of Paris, and from her dealer, Durand-Ruel, it crossed the Atlantic. By 1915 it belonged to Mary Longyear, whose husband John, a Michigan timber and mining magnate, had moved their entire stone mansion from Marquette, on Lake Superior, to Brookline, just outside Boston. The house was taken apart in 1903 and carried east in about 190 railroad cars, and the family moved into it in 1906. After the Longyear estate was sold at auction, the painting passed to Aimée Lamb, a Boston collector, who owned it by about 1939. She gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1970, in memory of her parents.