In this intimate sculpture, a young woman nurses her infant, enveloping the child in her voluminous coat. She gazes at the baby with an expression of maternal love, unaware of the presence of a viewer. The artist, Aimé-Jules Dalou, was a friend and contemporary of Auguste Rodin and an important figure in the development of French sculpture in the 1800s. Dalou often turned to the working class and poor as his subjects, ennobling them through dignified representations in line with his leftist politics.