Sara's likeness appears again and again in Cassatt's sketches and oil paintings, one of the many children to inhabit the artist's world. The loose style of Sara Smiling lends a sense of spontaneity to the print; owing to the subject's young age, Cassatt would have had to work quickly to record the child's likeness before she broke her pose to go play.

The viewer will appreciate, as does catalogue raisonné author Adeyln Dohm Breeskin, the artist's treatment of her models: "wholly of this world, completely human, observed with penetrating awareness of reality and absolute honesty and directness" (18). Achille Segard cites a similar "emotional lyricism that is revealed, in her work, through faces, gestures, and movements alone" (Cassatt: A Retrospective, 130). Whether focused on a nursing mother or on children playing, Cassatt's talent derives from her intuitive connection to the human element in any scene.

Created from the original plate, this work features additional hand coloring in pastel shades. Sara Smiling, an original drypoint etching, is a state I (of I) print with full margins and a pronounced plate mark.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
This work is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work).

1. Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. Original drypoint etching listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 195.

2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this work.

About the Framing:
This work is framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, presented in a complimentary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.