Nurse and Baby by Beatrice Huntington (1889-1988) captures a nurse in her white uniform holding a baby that is partially off the bottom of the canvas. Through wide, singular strokes of colour, Huntington softly captures the details of the nurse's face. The rosiness of the nurse's cheeks, is in rounded strokes of red and pink, with a few strokes of blue throughout the face to create a contrasting coolness in the shadows. The baby's partially seen face contains more blended strokes of paint, with warmer shadows that depict its fresh liveliness. The thickness of the paint and the softness of detail attribute this work to the Impressionist technique. 

Huntington is well known as a portrait painter, with later portraits contrasting this more Impressionist one with stronger Colourist influences of singular sections of colour making up the elements of each portrait. There were numerous sketches in preparation of this work that Huntington completed, showing an attention to studying her subject before creating the final work. This piece has been shown numerous times, shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1939 and the Royal Academy in London in 1948. 

Beatrice Huntington, 1889-1988

Beatrice Huntington was a celebrated Scottish protrait painter in the 1920s and 1930s. She was born in St Andrews and trained in Paris, Munich and London. Huntington was also a celebrated cellist, having studied the cello in Leipzig. She moved to Dundee after WWI to study under the painter William Macdonald whom she later married in 1925. The two artists moved to a flat on Hanover Street, Edinburgh in 1929, spending the rest of their lives living their whilst travelling extensively throughout Europe.