Cassatt applied pastel in thick strokes and blended it into a very fine texture and sometimes into the paper itself, as did Edgar Degas. Her repetition of a particular subject—women with children—also may have been inspired by Degas, who reiterated themes, such as ballerinas and bathing women, in accordance with his credo: "It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem to be chance, but even movement." Cassatt used this pastel as the basis for the last of her major prints, Picking Daisies in a Field (ca. 1896–97), which remained unfinished.

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