Mary Cassatt and The Boating Party

A lot has been written about the mastery and master pieces of such household names as Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. Their impressionistic art stand as a light of accomplishment and define the period of the late 1800s for many an art lover. The female impressionists and their contribution to both the movement and later developments have been less covered.

Among these we find Mary Cassatt paintings. The second female artist to join the impressionist movement, she exhibited with the group for the first time in 1877 and continued to be associated with them until she declared her independence from any specific artistic style in 1886. Even then, she was still in contact with friends like Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. While notable as an impressionist, it was actually after she set herself completely free that her most prolific period as an artist came about. Thus, in the 1890s, Cassatt produced many of her most well known paintings including The Boating Party. This iconic painting shows a woman holding her child while on a trip onto a lake in a rowing boat. Her husband is meanwhile rowing the boat. What is clear in the painting is that the main subject of Cassatt is the woman and her child. They are clearly facing us while we see only the back of the man. This focus was typical of most of the later works of Cassatt, where especially the relationship between mother and child was her topic.

The Boating Party is probably the most famous of Cassatt’s works. It was reproduced as a stamp by the US Postal Service in 1966, thus underlining the status of the work. The original painting can today be seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Meanwhile, Cassatt paintings have sold for upwards of USD 3 million. While that puts her below e.g. Monet in terms of price, it nevertheless puts her in the heavy weight class of painters, an important artist whose works and life still inspires.