The Boating Party

We continue #WomansHistoryMonth by presenting one of the few female impressionist painters: Mary Cassatt. Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Pennsylvania, but lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among 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.

Mary Cassatt painted this work during a stay at Antibes, on the Mediterranean coast of France. Under its intense sun, she began to experiment with harder, more decorative color. The bold geometry and decorative patterning of the surface reminds of Gauguin, Van Gogh and of course, of Japanese prints. 

This painting, one of her most ambitious, was the centerpiece of Cassatt's first solo exhibition in the United States in 1895. Her contacts with wealthy friends in the United States did much to bring avant–garde French painting into this country.