’The Boating Party’ by Mary Cassatt, Essay Example

This paper is based on the artwork analysis of the art piece named ‘The Boating Party’ painted by Mary Cassatt. This art work is the center-piece of the work of Cassatt and is was portrayed in the first solo show in America. This show was held at one of the galleries in New York named Durand-Ruel in the year 1895. This painting remain unusually still because of her body of work which includes its complex composition, its coloring and the subject matter. On the other hand, this painting’s advancement further is shaped by Cassatt’s work for the mural of Chicago and also for the print series named ‘Set of Ten’. Cassatt has spent several summer from the year 1893, on the coast Mediterranean at Antibes where she experimented by striving harder and decorative color where the plain air shows the Impressionism that came readily by hand.

In this painting, specific attention has been paid to the shapes and abstracts that are created by the foreshortened boat and by the sail. This indicates a continuous fascination with the color and decorative planes of the art of Japanese. This also involves the male character introduction into the usual young women cast and also the children suggests that Mary was working hard to show a new compositional and psychological effect in her painting. In the artwork of Cassatt we can see the pictures of children mothers or sisters on the basis of our expectations of the relationships. She had clearly depicted, answered and defined that there is a mystery and an ambiguity among these relationships. The form of man act as a reflecting image to the direction of our eye also shows the expectations of the artwork of Cassatt.

In the painting of ‘The Boating Party’, the theme is placed in a black-clad in the foreground. In one side of the painting we can see a more colorful child and woman. The central images in this art piece portray a self-absorbed expression that is familiar from the different works. This piece focuses on the theme of children and mothers and also reinforces the close relationship among them. As we can see from the integrity of the outline of this painting, the background of sea and from the man that this relationship is detached. They are separated physically from him (the man) by the boat’s transom seat as well as from the strenuous energy and color that is contrasted to their calmness and passivity. Although, this masterpiece by Mary Cassatt is not perfect completely, it has many issues as well. But despite this fact, the painting ‘The Boating Party’ is an emotional and compositional effectiveness of the relationship of mother and child. It also shows that its emotional effects are undiminished. Cassatt, herself has regarded this art work as her favorite and she had kept this for many year till 1914, in her own collection.

To sum up, we can say that the composition of this art piece is the most interesting of all the paintings of Cassatt. It is because of its arresting and unconventional setting. The boatman’s darkly cladded image looms in the bigger foreground which almost appears out of the canvas of the project. The sail at the oar, left and at the bow of the boat, points to the child’s head who is in the pose of the artist typically and showing gracelessly in the lap of his mother. Despite of the centrality and the simple subjectivity of the contended child, the painting initiates a strange intensity that is psychological. This is due to the enigmatic relationship between the mother and children. They both in this movie are linked closely together in the composition. So the execution, sheer size and the conception of this art piece is surely one of the boldest work of Cassatt.