The Boating Party
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) · 1893 to 1894
A man in dark blue rows a small boat across water so bright it looks like enamel. Facing him, a woman in a pale dress and a flowered hat holds a squirming child in her lap, the two of them wedged into the bow. The oarsman is seen from behind, his face hidden under the brim of a beret, so that the whole force of the picture goes across the boat from his dark bulk to the mother and child. The yellow hull and the single sail push against the flat blue lake, and the distant shore is reduced to a thin strip.
Cassatt painted this on the Mediterranean coast at Antibes during the winter of 1893 to 1894, and the light is southern, clean and hard. The composition is bold: the boat is cut off at both ends, the horizon is pushed almost to the top, and the shapes are flattened into big, clean areas of colour, ideas Cassatt took from the Japanese woodblock prints she had studied intensely a few years earlier. Look at the black diagonal of the oar, which slices across the picture and ties the man to the child, and at the way the child's leg kicks out in the only real movement in the scene. The faces are painted simply, without fuss, because the drama here is in the arrangement.
Cassatt, born in Pittsburgh, spent her career in France and was the only American invited to exhibit with the Impressionists. Her friend Degas encouraged her, and this picture is her most ambitious statement, meant for exhibition rather than a private commission. She kept it in her own collection for years. It was bought by Chester Dale, the New York collector whose gift of French painting transformed the National Gallery, and came to Washington in 1963. Notice how the woman's eyes are fixed on the oarsman, while the child stares straight out at you.
Did You Know? Cassatt kept the painting for herself and refused to sell it for years, showing it only rarely.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.