Boating Party Mary Cassatt Stone Coaster

The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt, oil on canvas 1893-1894, is a painting of the figures of a mother holding her small child in a boat with sail and a man in dark blue suit, sash and beret rowing the bright yellow oars against a background of deep azure blue water. The woman and her infant, seated at the prow of the boat in 19th century costume and hats, stare intently at the powerful oarsman, whose form fills the foreground of the picture plane. Influenced by Degas, Cassatt constructs the picture as if cropped like a photograph, enhancing the movement and drama of an unsympathetically observed, powerfully realistic and colourful slice of a moment in time in real life, in strokes painterly, impasto oil colours. The brilliant yellows of the boat and its oars contrast with the complementary colours of the deep ultramarine blue and azure tones of the lake and costume of the oarsman. Cassatt sets a powerful depiction of her frequent theme of mother and child amid a realist depiction of middle class life in the 19th century. Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 - 1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became an important member of the French Impressionist movement of art. Born in Pennsylvania, Cassatt studied abroad in Europe as a young woman, where she began her first studies in art. Dedicating herself to art, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, until she moved to Paris in 1866 to study with Jean-Leon Gerome of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and became a copyist in the Louvre. By 1874 Cassatt had a studio in Paris but struggled to exhibit in the official French Salon, until Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist exhibitions. Degas tremendously influenced Cassatt, about whom he wittily remarked "No woman has the right to draw like that", and the two artists had a close working relationship for years as Mary absorbed Degas’ drawing, composition, and mastery of the mediums of pastel and etching. Cassatt posed for a number of paintings by the elder artist, and created her own unsentimental, rigorously drawn figure paintings of scenes from modern life, notably many paintings on the theme of mother and child. Her series of highly original coloured prints in etching and aquatint are an unsurpassed landmark in the history of art, influenced by the elegance of classical Japanese printmakers. An early feminist and supporter of women’s suffrage, Cassatt painted prolifically until well into old age, exhibiting at the notorious American Armoury Show of 1913.