Priya Kapoor
Mary Cassatt was a prominent American Impressionist painter, who is best known for her paintings of mothers and children. Although she never married or had children, Cassatt's paintings of motherhood are renowned for their delicate and sensual portrayal of women as primary caregivers. Her work is often interpreted as having feminist undertones, presenting a modern view of domestic life and seeking to break traditional artistic barriers. Cassatt's painting 'Mother and Child' (The Oval Mirror) is a notable example, which depicts a mother and child in a domestic setting, contrasting traditional Renaissance and Baroque depictions of Mary and Jesus.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Artist | Mary Cassatt |
| Year | 1897 |
| Medium | Pastel |
| Paper colour | Blue |
| Size | 90 x 117.3 cm |
| Themes | Motherhood, childcare, family, domesticity |
| Style | Impressionist |
| Influences | Renaissance art, Italian and French masters |
| Owners | The Havemeyers, The Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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What You'll Learn
Mary Cassatt's artistic techniques
Mary Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker who lived most of her adult life in France. She is known for her paintings of women and children, with a particular focus on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. Cassatt's work often depicted delicate scenes of contemporary life, with an emphasis on quickly capturing moments of motherhood. She pioneered images of intimate and domestic everyday moments, contributing greatly to the Impressionist movement in Paris.
Cassatt's artistic techniques were influenced by her association with Impressionism and her exposure to European arts and culture during her early life. She abandoned colourful costume genre depictions in favour of scenes from contemporary life, using soft, gentle, and tender portraits to capture intimate moments. Cassatt was also influenced by Japanese art masters Utamaro and Toyokuni, shifting her focus from form to highlighting lines and patterns. This can be seen in her work "The Coiffure", where she used drypoint lines to establish the figure and aquatint to build tone and pattern.
Cassatt was a skilled handler of pastel sticks, as seen in her work "Mother and Child". She preferred blue paper, which was widely used by nineteenth-century pastelists and provided a chromatic element that played against loosely painted strokes. Cassatt also employed an eighteenth-century mounting format for her pastel works, adhering paper to a board along the edges or by wrapping and pasting the margins to the back of the panel.
Cassatt's work often included mirrors, such as in "Mother and Child", where the woman and girl look into a small, circular mirror, reflecting on the child's evolving feminine identity and future womanhood. This subverted the traditional Western art depiction of women admiring their own reflections. Cassatt's colleague Edgar Degas noted her references to the Renaissance in this painting, perceiving it as "the Infant Jesus and his English nurse".
Cassatt's painting style reflected her strong feminist ideas and bohemian lifestyle. She advocated for equal rights and was unsatisfied with the patriarchal teachings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her persistence and success as a female artist in a male-dominated field inspired young female artists, challenging old methods and adapting her art to the modern world.
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The mother-child relationship
Mary Cassatt was an American painter who is best known for her soft, gentle, and tender portrayals of motherhood. She was the only American painter included in the Impressionist movement in Paris, a distinction she alone held as a female artist. Cassatt's paintings of mothers and children are renowned for their ability to capture the physicality of childcare and the emotional bond between mother and child.
Cassatt's interest in portraying the mother-child relationship developed later in her life, perhaps influenced by her own experience as a woman who never married or had children. Her paintings of mothers and children are often set in domestic scenes, a departure from the traditional religious themes that dominated Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. By placing her subjects in familiar, everyday settings, Cassatt invites a contemporary feminist reading of her work, challenging traditional gender roles and emphasizing the vital role of women as primary caregivers.
Cassatt's paintings strive to present women in a sensual and emotional light, exploring their sexuality through the prism of their motherliness. Notably, all of her adult subjects are clothed, as she rejected the female nude to avoid objectifying women as erotic objects of desire. In contrast, many children in her paintings are depicted naked, often during bath time, symbolizing purity, goodness, and genuineness.
Cassatt's handling of pastel, her preferred medium, is exemplified in her "Mother and Child" paintings. She favoured blue paper, which provided a chromatic element that played against loosely painted strokes, creating a unique texture. "Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror)," also known as "The Florentine Madonna," is a notable example of this style, showcasing her impressive repertoire of avant-garde techniques.
One of Cassatt's most famous paintings, "Maternal Caress" (1896), highlights the physical and emotional aspects of the mother-child relationship. The painting depicts a toddler with strawberry blond curls appearing to suck their thumb, while their caregiver grips their arm tightly in a gesture of restraint. This work challenges the notion of Cassatt as a painter of idyllic nursery scenes, revealing a more complex and realistic portrayal of motherhood.
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Feminism in Cassatt's work
Mary Cassatt was a prominent American painter and printmaker in the 19th century. She was a key figure in the Impressionist movement, and her work focused on the lives of women, especially mothers and children. Cassatt's art offered intimate and tender portrayals of domestic life, reflecting the real, emotional connections between mothers and their children.
Cassatt's work contributed to the artistic developments of her time and helped shape the role of women in art, both as subjects and creators. She was one of the few female artists included in the male-dominated Impressionist movement, and her commitment to a career as a professional artist was a stand against the societal norms of her time. Cassatt's work challenged the traditional portrayal of women as passive subjects in art and emphasized their dignity and strength in domestic settings.
Cassatt's paintings often depicted women in everyday life at home, engaging in activities such as embroidery, reading, or making social appearances. Her work avoided the idealization commonly seen in male artists' depictions of women and instead presented them with unflattering accuracy. Cassatt's use of light, colour, and brushwork imbued her scenes with a sense of immediacy and emotional depth, making her work a powerful exploration of womanhood and family life.
Cassatt's focus on the private lives of women and her outspoken support for women's equality positioned her as an important figure in the feminism movement. Her art contributed to the exploration of themes of identity, motherhood, and the female experience, paving the way for future generations of women in the arts. Cassatt's legacy endures as an influential force in feminist art history, and her work continues to inspire and captivate audiences today.
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The influence of Impressionism
Mary Cassatt was the only American painter who exhibited with the Impressionists, a male-dominated, avant-garde brotherhood. Cassatt's work is often associated with feminism, as many of her paintings depict women in the traditional role of caregivers to children. She was interested in portraying the mother-child relationship, for which she is widely renowned today.
Cassatt's paintings of mothers and children are influenced by Impressionism in their subject matter, style, and technique. Impressionism was the painting of modern life, and Cassatt's life was thoroughly modern. She often depicted infants and children, but she herself never married or had children. This sets her apart from the traditional Italian and French masters, whose paintings of the Madonna and Christ Child she sought to reinvent.
Cassatt's paintings of mothers and children are often set in domestic scenes, which art historian Edgar Richardson once described as a "perpetual afternoon tea." Her paintings of motherhood are delicate, soft, gentle, and tender. She presents women in a sensual and emotional light, only admitting sexuality through the prism of their motherliness. Many children in her paintings are naked, as she perceived children to symbolise purity, goodness, and genuineness.
In terms of style and technique, Cassatt's work demonstrates her excellent handling of pastel, a medium with modernist appeal due to its speed of execution, array of ready-made colours, and adaptability to different handling. She often used blue paper, which was comparable to the toned grounds of canvases used by Impressionists, where the hue provided a chromatic element that played against loosely painted strokes. Cassatt also employed an eighteenth-century mounting format for her pastels, which was unusual for her time.
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Cassatt's legacy
Mary Cassatt is considered a pivotal figure in modern art, with a legacy that endures to this day. She is recognised as one of the most important American expatriate artists of the late 1800s, alongside John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. Cassatt's work defied gendered expectations of the time and broke into the male-dominated art world, paving the way for future female artists. She was the only American artist to exhibit with the Impressionists in Paris, a group that was new, rebellious, and male-dominated.
Cassatt's work focused on contemporary subjects, light, and colour, often drawing inspiration from Japanese art and photography. Her paintings depicted domestic settings and intimate, everyday moments, such as a woman reading a newspaper in a private garden or a young girl alone in a domestic interior. This was a conscious choice, as Cassatt herself was restricted to the domestic world as a respectable woman. Despite this restriction, she brought technical skill and psychological insight to her work, creating powerful depictions of women's labour and relationships.
Cassatt's innovative approach to art and her novel depictions of modern life found an eager audience among international collectors, institutions, and the public. She was a trailblazing artist, with a unique style that combined the light colour palette and loose brushwork of Impressionism with compositions influenced by Japanese art and European Old Masters. Her work in various media throughout her career helped establish her professional success at a time when few women were regarded as serious artists.
Cassatt's influence also extended beyond her artwork. She played a crucial role in building significant art collections in the United States and helped establish the taste for Impressionist art in her native country. Her work is now featured in prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Cassatt has also been the focus of influential scholarship on female artists, with her work discussed by key feminist art historians such as Griselda Pollock and Linda Nochlin.
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Frequently asked questions
Cassatt's Mother and Child was painted using pastel on blue paper.
The painting depicts a mother holding a child, with the child's face expressing perfection.
The painting is a part of the Impressionist movement, with Cassatt being the only American to be included in this group.
The painting can be interpreted as a representation of the vital role of women as caregivers, with the mother being undisturbed by the child's action.
