The Boating Party | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Artist | Mary Cassatt |
Year | 1893 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Movement | Post Impressionism |
Dimensions | 90 cm× 117.3 cm(46 3/16 in× 35 7/16 in) |
Location | National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
Accession | 1963.10.94 |
Website | www |
The Boating Party is an oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt created in 1893. It is also known under the titles La partie en bateau; La barque; Les canotiers; and En canot. [1] Measuring nearly three by four feet, it is Cassatt’s largest and most ambitious painting. [1] [2] It has been in the Chester Dale Collection of the National Gallery of Art since 1963. [1] [3] [4]
Cassatt painted The Boating Party during the winter of 1893–1894 in Antibes, on the French Riviera. Cassatt spent January and February 1894 at the Villa "La Cigaronne," in Cap d'Antibes with her mother. [5] [6] The previous year had been a successful one: Cassatt had completed the mural Modern Woman for the Woman's Building at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, her exhibition in 1893 at Durand-Ruel's gallery had been well received, [7] [8] and the French state had decided to purchase one of her paintings for the Musée du Luxembourg. [9]
The Boating Party depicts an unknown woman, baby, and man in a sailboat. [10] The boat has a canoe stern, is boomless, and has three thwarts. Cassatt uses bold, dark colors to depict the boatman and bright yellow to contrast the boat and its passengers. The child is held in the woman’s lap with the man facing them and his back to the audience. [1] Griselda Pollock notes that the man in the painting is dressed in a refined version of the local fisherman’s clothing which is shown through the sash around his waist and the floppy beret atop his head.[ citation needed ]
It is an unusual painting in Cassatt's œuvre. While it does show her familiar theme of a mother and child, most of her other paintings are set in interiors or in gardens. [11] It is also one of her largest oil paintings. [12]
Cassatt conceived the painting while looking out at the Mediterranean landscape from La Cigaronne, where she noted that “the country is too beautiful, it grows wearisome” and that the people of Antibes were not beautiful enough for her to draw inspiration from. [2] The art historian Adelyn Breeskin notes that Impressionism, Japanese printmaking, and Correggio’s Madonna and Child all shaped the style of The Boating Party. [1] The vibrancy of the woman and child, as well as the boat and sea, are indicative of this Impressionist emphasis on bright colors based on plein air observation. The cropped view of the boat and the asymmetrical composition also suggest the influence of Ukiyo-e prints, which interested Cassatt. [1] In 1890, Cassatt had visited the great Japanese Print exhibition at the École de Beaux-arts in Paris. [8] [13] Mary Cassatt owned Japanese prints by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806). [14] [15] The exhibition at Durand-Ruel of Japanese art proved the most important influence on Cassatt. [16] Cassatt's depiction of the woman and child was also inspired by Antonio da Correggio, who used a soft, natural style to depict his Madonna and Child paintings. [1]
Frederick A. Sweet suggests that Cassatt may have been inspired by Édouard Manet's Boating from 1874. [17]
Boating was exhibited at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1879, where it was not well received. Cassatt however, convinced her friend Louisine Havemeyer to buy it. [11]
The Boating Party was one of the rare instances in which Cassatt depicted a man. [18] Though the roles of each figure in the painting are unclear, Griselda Pollock believes that Cassatt is referencing the family dynamic of the late 1800s. [18] Cassatt, according to Pollock, may have been attempting to show that while the man focuses on his work (i.e. rowing), the woman watches over the child. This dynamic is further emphasized by the use of the oar which Pollock claims may be being used to separate the male and female realms. Cassatt, who was known for associating women with nature, creativity, and renewal, may have placed the woman and child as the focal point of the painting because she wanted to show the importance of the mother role in society. [18] Though there is no definitive relationship between the members of the painting, Pollock assumed that the woman is the mother of the child based on Cassatt’s previous works which highlighted the mother-child relationship. [18]
Pollock also states that the relationship between the man, woman, and child is suggested by their hands all meeting in the middle, while only the child and woman make direct contact. This fact, Pollock indicates, was meant to show the physical and psychological distance of the man from the other occupants of the boat. [18]
Several scholars have suggested that Cassatt wished to make the mother and child the focal point of the painting by positioning them at the intersection of the diagonal lines formed by the oar, the sail, and the man's arm. [18] [19] Cassatt also uses these elements to bring the spectator into the painting itself. [18]
Nancy Mathews regards the painting as an exploration of themes from different phases of Cassatt's career. [2] Mathews claims that The Boating Party attempts to bring Cassatt’s past and present into the same work. [2] The boatsman, who is depicted in dark colors in the foreground, represents Cassatt’s earlier artwork; the brightly lit mother and child highlight Cassatt’s current artistic subject. [2]
Though the Boating Party was considered one of Cassatt’s largest and best works, Cassatt did not want to sell the painting because it held sentimental value for her. [2] In 1914, Cassatt wrote “About the painting, La Barque, I do not want to sell it; I have already promised it to my family. It was done at Antibes 20 years ago—the year my niece came into the world." [1] However, later in life, she would place the painting on the market for sale as she did not believe her family held the painting in the same esteem as she did. [2]
Art historian Frederick A. Sweet calls The Boating Party "One of the most ambitious paintings [Cassatt] ever attempted." [20] According to Breeskin, no female painter has yet surpassed Mary Cassatt’s work. [1] Cassatt’s unique artistic style in The Boating Party, which combined American and French Impressionism, Japanese woodblock painting styles, and her own innovations, would later become a well-known model from which many future female artists would learn. [1]
In 1966, the painting appeared on a US postage stamp.
colorplate 75 35 7/16x46 1/8 in. (90 x117 cm) The Chester Dale Collection. [22]
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer was an art collector, feminist, and philanthropist. In addition to being a patron of impressionist art, she was one of the more prominent contributors to the suffrage movement in the United States. The impressionist painter Edgar Degas and feminist Alice Paul were among the renowned recipients of this benefactor's support.
Paul Durand-Ruel was a French art dealer associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. Being the first to support artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is known for his innovations in modernizing art markets, and is generally considered to be the most important art dealer of the 19th century. An ambitious entrepreneur, Durand-Ruel cultivated international interest in French artists by establishing art galleries and exhibitions in London, New York, Berlin, Brussels, among other places. Additionally, he played a role in the decentralization of art markets in France, which prior to the mid-19th century was monopolized by the Salon system.
The Child's Bath is an 1893 oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The painting continues her interest in depicting bathing and motherhood, but it is distinct in its angle of vision. Both the subject matter and the overhead perspective were inspired by Japanese Woodcut prints and Edgar Degas.
Anne Goldthwaite was an American painter and printmaker and an advocate of women's rights and equal rights. Goldthwaite studied art in New York City. She then moved to Paris where she studied modern art, including Fauvism and Cubism, and became a member of a circle that included Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. She was a member of a group of artists that called themselves Académie Moderne and held annual exhibitions.
Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. Gauguin said the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her.
In The Loge, also known as At The Opera, is an 1878 Impressionist painting by the American artist Mary Cassatt. The oil-on-canvas painting is currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which also holds a preliminary drawing for the work. The painting displays a bourgeois woman at the opera house looking through her opera glasses, while a man in the background looks at her. The woman's costume and fan make clear her upper class status. Art historians see the painting as commentary on the role of gender, looking, and power in the social spaces of the nineteenth century.
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair is an 1878 oil painting by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Edgar Degas made some changes in the painting.
Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother is a drypoint print dated circa 1889 by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. The example illustrated is in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and is a gift of Samuel Putnam Avery.
Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge is an 1879 painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired the painting in 1978 from the bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright. The style in which it was painted and the depiction of shifting light and color was influenced by Impressionism. This painting shows a view of the modern woman and is similar in style to Degas.
Young Mother Sewing aka Little Girl Leaning on her Mother's Knee is a 1900 painting by the American artist Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the American Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt. The painting depicts a mother and her child in front of a mirror. The painting provides a glimpse of the domestic life of a mother and her child, evoking religious iconography from the Italian Renaissance. However, portrayals of a mother and her child are common in Cassatt's work, so it is possible that this similarity is coincidental rather than intentional.
Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly is an oil-on-canvas painting by Mary Cassatt created in 1880. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The American artist Mary Cassatt painted The Cup of Tea in Paris ca. 1879–1881. The painting depicts Mary's sister Lydia Cassatt in a typical, upper class-Parisian ritual of afternoon tea. Scholars have observed that Cassatt's choice to employ vivid colors, loose brushstrokes, and unique perspective to portray the scene makes it a quintessentially Impressionist painting.
Laure was an art model in France known for her work with artist Édouard Manet. She is best known for posing as the black maid offering the white nude figure a bouquet of flowers in Manet's 1863 painting Olympia.
La Japonaise is an 1876 oil painting by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Painted on a 231.8 cm × 142.3 cm canvas, the full-length portrait depicts a European woman in a red uchikake kimono standing in front of a wall decorated by Japanese fans. Monet's first wife Camille Doncieux modeled for the painting.
The Tea, also referred to as Five O’Clock Tea, is an oil-on-canvas painting of two women having tea by the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. The role of gender in the painting has been the subject of differing interpretations among art historians. Griselda Pollock describes the confined interior as an evocation of the spatial and social constraints placed on women at the time. Norma Broude asks whether the work might contain "possibilities for empowerment," showing the agency that women exercised through sociability. And John Loughery argues that the intention behind Cassatt's work might always remain a mystery.
A Woman and a Girl Driving is an oil-on-canvas painting by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, painted in 1881. It emphasizes the theme of female autonomy in a male dominated society. Lydia Cassatt, the artist's sister, is shown holding the reins of the family's carriage alongside Odile Fèvre, the niece of Edgar Degas, and a servant to the family, Mathieu, traveling through the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Emphasizing Lydia's position of command, Cassatt draws attention to the evolving perceptions of female identity in the late 19th century. The painting serves to challenge prevailing social norms of the time and unveil the range of female experience.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)