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Lot Essay
Throughout her career Mary Cassatt explored the subject of women and children with tenderness and poignancy. By the 1890s, Cassatt had established herself as a major artist and the demand for her work was at a peak. Moreover, Cassatt in the spring of 1898 was having an exhibition of her latest works in New York and Boston. Having not been to America in almost twenty five years, Cassatt somewhat regarded this trip as her triumphant return which inspired a series of works from 1897 that are regarded as some of her best known and most beloved images. Executed circa 1897, Two Young Girls with a Child, part of this series, typifies her ambitious style at this juncture in her career.
Two Young Girls with a Child is part of a group of work executed in the 1890s that exhibit Cassatt's renewed approach to her mother and child theme. Cassatt reveals a greater sense of playfulness and lighthearted engagement between her figures, unlike her previous works, which tended to be more formal in arrangement, both stylistically and thematically. More importantly, Cassatt during this time in her career shifted her attention more exclusively to children. The present work captures a glimpse of two young girls engaged in a playful moment with a young child under a tree out of doors. Cassatt chooses not to include a motherly figure. The child, though presented in profile, is the focal point of the composition: as one girl playfully lifts the child, the other attempts to catch her attention by tugging or plucking a leaf overhead.
Two Young Girls with a Child also harks to several signature elements that recur throughout Cassat's works from the 1890s. Specifically, the young child and the girl holding the child appear in many important oils, pastels and prints executed in 1897, including Three Women Admiring a Child (Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan) and Breakfast in Bed (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Pasadena, California). Furthermore, according to Barbara Shapiro, "Under the Chestnut Tree and By the Pond are two of many works [prints] that grew out of the playful poses struck by these same models. They also can be seen in the oil sketch, Two Young Girls with a Child and A Kiss for Baby Anne (No. 2) [The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland] as well as numerous other pastels from 1897. The oil sketch shows the same pose of the woman holding up a child while behind her another woman plucks something from the tree, perhaps indicating that Cassatt's first idea was to return to the Gathering Fruit theme of a few years before." (N.M. Matthews and B.S. Shapiro, Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, 1989, p. 181).
Stylistically, Cassatt's new attitude towards the child is underscored by her more liberated color scheme. Two Young Girls and Child is composed of a rich palette of lavenders, blues, yellows and oranges that are offset by lines and swatches of brown and black. The casual mingling of both agitated and more controlled brushstrokes further enhances the works overall sense of informality, gayety and joviality.
Cassatt's Two Young Girls and a Child captures through her sophisticated handling of color, brushwork and composition a universal sense of charm and affection. These qualities were coveted by Cassatt's contemporary patrons and are today revered as elements exhibited in her finest works.
This painting will be included in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonn of the works of Mary Cassatt.
Two Young Girls with a Child is part of a group of work executed in the 1890s that exhibit Cassatt's renewed approach to her mother and child theme. Cassatt reveals a greater sense of playfulness and lighthearted engagement between her figures, unlike her previous works, which tended to be more formal in arrangement, both stylistically and thematically. More importantly, Cassatt during this time in her career shifted her attention more exclusively to children. The present work captures a glimpse of two young girls engaged in a playful moment with a young child under a tree out of doors. Cassatt chooses not to include a motherly figure. The child, though presented in profile, is the focal point of the composition: as one girl playfully lifts the child, the other attempts to catch her attention by tugging or plucking a leaf overhead.
Two Young Girls with a Child also harks to several signature elements that recur throughout Cassat's works from the 1890s. Specifically, the young child and the girl holding the child appear in many important oils, pastels and prints executed in 1897, including Three Women Admiring a Child (Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan) and Breakfast in Bed (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Pasadena, California). Furthermore, according to Barbara Shapiro, "Under the Chestnut Tree and By the Pond are two of many works [prints] that grew out of the playful poses struck by these same models. They also can be seen in the oil sketch, Two Young Girls with a Child and A Kiss for Baby Anne (No. 2) [The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland] as well as numerous other pastels from 1897. The oil sketch shows the same pose of the woman holding up a child while behind her another woman plucks something from the tree, perhaps indicating that Cassatt's first idea was to return to the Gathering Fruit theme of a few years before." (N.M. Matthews and B.S. Shapiro, Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, 1989, p. 181).
Stylistically, Cassatt's new attitude towards the child is underscored by her more liberated color scheme. Two Young Girls and Child is composed of a rich palette of lavenders, blues, yellows and oranges that are offset by lines and swatches of brown and black. The casual mingling of both agitated and more controlled brushstrokes further enhances the works overall sense of informality, gayety and joviality.
Cassatt's Two Young Girls and a Child captures through her sophisticated handling of color, brushwork and composition a universal sense of charm and affection. These qualities were coveted by Cassatt's contemporary patrons and are today revered as elements exhibited in her finest works.
This painting will be included in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonn of the works of Mary Cassatt.