Mary Cassatt

[1844 – 1926] The Boating Party c. 1893 - 1894

•

Mary Stevenson Cassatt

(May 22, 1844 June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. • She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.

• Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into favorable circumstances: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family. • Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. Cassatt was one of seven children, of which two died in infancy.

• Her family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she began schooling at age six.

• Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. • She had her first lessons in drawing and music while abroad and learned German and French. • Her first exposure to French artists Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, and Courbet was likely at the Paris World's Fair of 1855 at age 11.

• Also exhibited at the exhibition were Degas and Pissarro, both of whom would be future colleagues and mentors.

• Even though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the early age of fifteen, and continued her studies during the years of the American Civil War. [1861 – 1865]

• Part of their concern may have been Cassatt's exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students, of which one was Thomas Eakins, (John Biglin in a Single Skull) later the controversial director of the Academy.

• About 20% of the students were female. Though most were not bent on making a career of art, they viewed art as a valid means of achievement and recognition, and a socially valuable talent. • Cassatt, instead, was determined to become a professional artist.

• Mary Cassatt decided to become an artist at age sixteen, when most women of her era and social status were looking forward only to marriage.

• Her professional work was her priority. She never married. She felt her work was not compatible with marriage and family.

• Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said, "There was no teaching" at the Academy. • Female students could not use live models (until somewhat later) and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts.

• Defying convention, after the Civil War she headed to Europe in 1866 and settled in Paris, where she remained for most of her life.

• As a woman, Cassatt was not permitted to enroll in the École des Beaux-Arts, the leading art academy in France, • She found private instruction and educated herself by copying paintings in the Louvre Museum.

• Years later, she recalled that her life had changed when she met the artist Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the

Impressionist circle.

• Through the years, Degas became a frequent dinner guest of the Cassett family.

Edgar Degas

• Partly because women were not welcome in the Paris cafés where the Impressionists often discovered their subject matter, she specialized in domestic paintings, particularly of mothers and children.

• Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

• In the late 1880s, when Cassatt was well established in her career, she fell under the

influence of Japanese prints

and

dramatically altered her own style of painting.

• Japanese wood-block prints , became a source of inspiration for many European impressionist painters in France and the rest of the West, and eventually for Art Nouveau and Cubism .

Paul Cézanne: French artist and Post Impressionist painter His work is said to have formed the bridge between the Impressionism of the late 19th century and the early 20th century Cubism art movement.

• Although best known for her perceptive painted depictions of women and children, Mary Cassatt (1844 –1926) was also an accomplished printmaker. • After seeing the 1890 exhibition of Japanese woodcuts in Paris, Cassatt decided to create a series of prints. • She adapted the ukiyo-e (the floating world) theme of women’s everyday lives to scenes showing a modern French woman, as she went about caring for a child, trying on a dress, and, in this work, sealing an envelope.

• In

The Letter

, the influence of Japanese prints can be seen in the bold patterns in the wallpaper and dress, strong color blocks, and a sense of flattened, compressed space. • Cassatt translates these formal elements into a scene of personal significance. • For Cassatt, who was an American expatriate living in Paris, letter writing would have been the way she kept in touch with family and friends. The drop-leaf desk that is included in this composition still belongs to the artist’s family, and it is thought that Cassatt may have used it to write letters.

• Artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the flat areas of strong color, the compositional freedom in placing the subject off-centre, with mostly low diagonal axes to the background.

• Unlike other varieties of Orientalism , Japonism mostly involved Western artists using elements of Eastern styles in works showing their own culture;

• Abandoning the feathery brushwork, pastel colors, and insubstantial forms of Impressionism, Cassatt began to create bold, unconventional patterns of flat color and solid forms.

• Cassatt was attracted to the simplicity and clarity of Japanese design, and the skillful use of blocks of color. • In her interpretation, she used primarily light, delicate pastel colors and avoided black (a “forbidden” color among the Impressionists).

• A. Breeskin, of the Smithsonian Institution, notes that these colored prints,

“now stand as her most original contribution... adding a new chapter to the history of graphic arts...technically, as color prints, they have never been surpassed”

•

The Boating Party,

painted on the south coast of France, exemplifies this change.

• Rather than attempting to capture a fleeting visual impression, Cassatt arranged abstract shapes in a shallow space using saturated areas of color that may have been inspired by the brilliant Mediterranean light.

• To heighten the decorative effect, she flattened the scene, placing the horizon line at the top of the composition in Japanese fashion.

• From our unusual vantage point, the three figures look like paper dolls pasted on a vivid background.

•

The Boating Party

is among Cassatt’s most ambitious canvases.

• The composition is controlled by visual rhymes. The boat’s yellow benches and horizontal support echo the horizontals of the far-off shoreline.

• The billowing sail echoes the curve of the boat, creating a strong visual movement to the left that counteracts the broad angle formed by an oar and the boatman’s left arm.

• Without the sail for balance, the large, dark figure of the boatman would weigh the picture to the right, and the boating party would lose its equilibrium.

• Where did Cassatt repeat yellow in this painting?

• At first glance, the painting seems a straightforward depiction of a nineteenth century middle-class outing. • Yet the artist included subtle hints about the figures’ relationships to one another that complicate this interpretation.

• How does blue unify this painting?

• Although Cassatt usually explored the familiar theme of mother and child, • In this rendition the foreground is dominated by a male figure whose form is pressed against the picture plane and cast in silhouette by the sail’s shadow.

• In contrast, the female element of the composition —the woman and her child— appears in soft, pastel shades that reflect the summer sunlight.

• Why does the man have his foot on the yellow boat support?

• The boatman, bending forward to begin another stroke of his oar, braces himself with one foot, while the woman maintains her stable position only by planting her feet on the floor of the boat.

• How is the composition of this painting like a snapshot?

•

It’s asymmetrical, with part of the figures continuing off the picture.

• Where are there broad areas of color?

• • •

Broad areas of color are found in the sail, the man’s back, the yellow parts of boat, the blue shadow in the boat, and the water.

(Asymmetrical balance and broad, flat areas of color were typical of the Japanese prints that became available in Europe and the United States following the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry in 1854; these prints influenced artists in the decades that followed.)

• The sprawling baby, lulled by the rhythm of the water, looks liable to slide right off the mother’s lap.

• What is the center of interest in this composition?

•

It is the child.

• How has Cassatt emphasized this part of the painting?

•

The curved lines of the boat, oar, and adults’ arms lead to the child.

• This slight awkwardness is a result of the boat’s movement, and the glances of the mother and child toward the boatman’s half-hidden features and back again suggest a complex, personal relationship, adding psychological tension to this pleasant excursion on a sunny afternoon.

• Cassatt’s many paintings of mothers with children invariably recall the Renaissance theme of the Madonna and Child.

• Here, the woman appears enthroned in the prow of the boat, the child’s sun hat encircles its head like a halo, and the man bows before them like a supplicant.

• In referring to this traditional image, Cassatt invests an everyday scene of contemporary life with a sense of reverence —perhaps to express her view of women as powerful forces of creativity (and procreativity).

• Yet the painting’s meaning remains open to interpretation. • Perhaps Cassatt touches on a truth that must have been evident to a woman painter who so closely observed the strictures of late nineteenth-century society;

• If the woman is elevated and admired, she may also be confined to the shallow space behind the oars, a passive participant without the power to control her own destiny.

Essay Question 1

• When Mary Cassatt decided to become a professional artist, why was it not socially acceptable for her to do so? • Why did she leave the United States and where did she go to study?

Essay Question 2

• What were the two major influences that changed Mary Cassatt’s painting styles throughout her career?

Essay Question 3

• Why did Mary Cassatt’s subjects primarily mothers and their children?

Essay Question 4

• In “the Boating Party” what style of Painting did Mary Cassatt employ?

• In what ways do forms seem to move toward the edges of the painting?

• What pulls the three figures together?