Confidences, from A New Sentimental Education

Charles Maurin's first color intaglio prints were made around the same time as Cassatt's extraordinary series of 10 color prints, and his subsequent graphic work owed a debt to her prints in both technique and subject. Later, he made two suites of prints, A Sentimental Education, 1897, and A New Sentimental Education, 1901, both of which were described as depicting "a mother attentive to the care of her child through the intimate details of daily life." Unlike Cassatt's cursory and abstracted drypoints of a mother and child like Reine and Margot Seated on a Sofa, Maurin surrounded his figures with domestic accoutrements. The charm of this subject is the rapt concentration with which the little girl listens to her mother, who whispers in her ear.