The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was an American Impressionist painter and printmaker who eventually made career in Europe which considers her as one of the America expatriates along with James Whistler. She was born in Pennsylvania but lived her adult life in France where she became friends with Edgar Degas, who was a famous French artist. 

The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt is oil on canvas painting. This amazing composition tells the influence of the flat, patterned surfaces, simplified color, and unusual angles of Japanese prints, which enjoyed a huge trend in Paris in the late 1800s. Looking at the subject of Cassatt’s The Boating Party, obviously it highlights the mother figure and the child on her arms which Cassatt often themes. She often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the warm bonds between mothers and children.

It is said that this composition was inspired after Cassatt began to spend many summers on the Mediterranean coast. I was also thought to have been inspired by the birth of Eugenie’s daughter Ellen Mary was bought by the National Gallery, Washington DC. And in 1996, Cassatt’s The Boating Party was reproduces on a US postage stamp.

This composition of Cassatt let the viewers feel the he may climb into the boat or he is actually with them; thinking that this painting may be that person’s point of view and child in the woman’s arms wriggles in a natural movement for one his age. As a fellow woman, I can really appreciate Cassatt’s works. She mainly focuses on women and children which she was greatly considered as a feminist.