The Boating Party
by Mary Cassatt
The Boating Party
by Mary Cassatt
Oil on canvas, 1894
90 x 117 cm
The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt was the center-piece of Cassatt’s first solo show in the United States, held at Durand-Ruel’s New York galleries in 1895. It remains unusual within her body of work for its coloring, complex composition and subject matter, and it may be seen as a further development shaped by her work for the Chicago mural and the ‘Set of Ten’ print series.
From 1893 Cassatt spent several summers on the Mediterranean coast at Antibes, where she stirred to experiment with harder, decorative color, and where the plein air subjects of Impressionism came readily to hand.
Particular attention has been paid to the abstract shapes created by the sail and the foreshortened boat, indicating a continued fascination with the decorative colored planes of Japanese art, while the introduction of a male character into her usual cast of young women and children suggests that Cassatt was striving for a new psychological as well as compositional effects.
Whereas in her pictures of mothers, children or sisters our expectations of the relationships depicted are clearly defined and answered, here there is ambiguity and mystery. The man’s form acts as a repoussoir figure to direct our eye, but also confounds our expectations of a Cassatt art work.
Placed in the foreground, his black-clad back closes off one side of the picture, while his braced left arm points into it center and focuses our attention on the more colourful woman and child. Despite this guidance, a reading of the whole picture is complicated by the exchange of glances which animates it. The central figures have something of the self-absorbed expression familiar from other works on the theme of mothers and children, and this reinforces their close relationship, as does the integrity of their outline which detaches them from the background of sea and from the man. They are physically separated from him by the transom seat in the boat, as well as through color, and his strenuous energy is contrasted to their passivity and calm.
An impression of divergence rather than unity is also suggested by the oar and by the arcing sail which counterbalances the expanse of black on the right. At the same time, however, there appears to be some indefinable communication between the three, the squirming child in particular acting with reassuring normality, although we cannot identify the man as either father or boatman.
Despite the many tensions within The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt, its compositional and emotional effectiveness is undiminished. Cassatt herself seems to have regarded the work favourably, for she kept it in her own collection for many years – at least until 1914.
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The Boating Party
By Mary Cassatt
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