拍品專文
Pastel progressively became Mary Cassatt's most expressive medium over the course of her career. Although she began working with pastel around 1878, the technique remained secondary in her oeuvre to oil painting until the 1890's. Like Degas, her great friend and mentor, she eventually produced more pastels than oils, and used Degas's same method of applying the pastel thickly, layer upon layer, with parts of it steamed to make it penetrate further into the paper. This method enabled her to achieve a rich, varied surface of glowing color like that of Mother, Sara, and the Baby, whose high-keyed, luminous tones are dazzling to the eye. The pastel is laid down in the bold, long strokes that became characteristic of Cassatt's handling of the medium after the turn of the century.
Mother, Sara, and the Baby has the vigor and sureness of execution of Mary Cassatt's fully mature style; during the early 1900's she gained more ease and freedom as well as more spontaneity in her work. Cassatt was comfortable with her medium, her models, and her subject; she was in total control of each form, each contour, each deftly placed area of color. In this pastel, she also displays a strong interest in linear design, particularly in the folds of patterned fabric thrown over the chair in the foreground. This heavily textured material is compositionally balanced by the dark wood of the vanity in the background and by the reflection of the baby's copper-colored hair. The device of the oval mirror gives the compacted space an added dimension.
This work is an explicit display of deliberate contrasts. The faces of the figures are more highly finished than their bodies and than the background, which tend toward sketchiness. The glistening sheen of the baby's warm, rosy flesh is set off against the more matte effect of the mother's cool white dress. The rhythmic twist of the pose of the nude child, who presses his feet firmly against the chair, emphasizes the still, contemplative attitudes of Sara and her mother. Sara's golden hair serves as a foil to the tones of her mother's dark blue-brown hair, and Sara's bright orange dress stands out against the paler color of her mother's costume, while serving as an anchor to the picture's center.
As always in her studies of mothers and children, Cassatt brings to this domestic scene a strength and sensuality that eschews the anecdotal or sentimental. After 1900 she preferred to use as models children from Mesnil-Theribus, the village near her country home fifty miles northwest of Paris. In 1901 she frequently employed Sara, who, according to Adelyn Breeskin, was a granddaughter of one of the former presidents of the French Republic, Emile Loubet. (A. Breeskin, op. cit., p. 150) Sara, her mother, and the baby appear in a very similar but horizontal version of this scene entitled After the Bath (fig. 1), in which the composition becomes almost frieze-like as a result of the two children flanking the central parent.
It is a tribute to the austerity with which Cassatt manipulates the essentially decorative medium of pastel that there are no gratuitous flourishes or unnecessary pictorial elements in this harmonious composition. Despite the implicit sentimentality of such a ritualized family narrative, Cassatt's clarity of vision and desire to honor visual truth removes any taint of cloying sweetness from the scene. Neither are we distracted by the identity of the sitters, since this seems obviously not to be a commissioned work. Flesh and blood as they appear, this trio nevertheless functions as the subject for a much deeper investigation than a mere flattering portrayal for rememberance's sake. Like her mentor Degas, Cassatt manages the virtually impossible: her subjects become objects, depersonalized, yet retain their humanity.
(fig. 1) Mary Cassatt, After the Bath, circa 1901
Cleveland Museum of Art (Gift of J.H. Wade)
Mother, Sara, and the Baby has the vigor and sureness of execution of Mary Cassatt's fully mature style; during the early 1900's she gained more ease and freedom as well as more spontaneity in her work. Cassatt was comfortable with her medium, her models, and her subject; she was in total control of each form, each contour, each deftly placed area of color. In this pastel, she also displays a strong interest in linear design, particularly in the folds of patterned fabric thrown over the chair in the foreground. This heavily textured material is compositionally balanced by the dark wood of the vanity in the background and by the reflection of the baby's copper-colored hair. The device of the oval mirror gives the compacted space an added dimension.
This work is an explicit display of deliberate contrasts. The faces of the figures are more highly finished than their bodies and than the background, which tend toward sketchiness. The glistening sheen of the baby's warm, rosy flesh is set off against the more matte effect of the mother's cool white dress. The rhythmic twist of the pose of the nude child, who presses his feet firmly against the chair, emphasizes the still, contemplative attitudes of Sara and her mother. Sara's golden hair serves as a foil to the tones of her mother's dark blue-brown hair, and Sara's bright orange dress stands out against the paler color of her mother's costume, while serving as an anchor to the picture's center.
As always in her studies of mothers and children, Cassatt brings to this domestic scene a strength and sensuality that eschews the anecdotal or sentimental. After 1900 she preferred to use as models children from Mesnil-Theribus, the village near her country home fifty miles northwest of Paris. In 1901 she frequently employed Sara, who, according to Adelyn Breeskin, was a granddaughter of one of the former presidents of the French Republic, Emile Loubet. (A. Breeskin, op. cit., p. 150) Sara, her mother, and the baby appear in a very similar but horizontal version of this scene entitled After the Bath (fig. 1), in which the composition becomes almost frieze-like as a result of the two children flanking the central parent.
It is a tribute to the austerity with which Cassatt manipulates the essentially decorative medium of pastel that there are no gratuitous flourishes or unnecessary pictorial elements in this harmonious composition. Despite the implicit sentimentality of such a ritualized family narrative, Cassatt's clarity of vision and desire to honor visual truth removes any taint of cloying sweetness from the scene. Neither are we distracted by the identity of the sitters, since this seems obviously not to be a commissioned work. Flesh and blood as they appear, this trio nevertheless functions as the subject for a much deeper investigation than a mere flattering portrayal for rememberance's sake. Like her mentor Degas, Cassatt manages the virtually impossible: her subjects become objects, depersonalized, yet retain their humanity.
(fig. 1) Mary Cassatt, After the Bath, circa 1901
Cleveland Museum of Art (Gift of J.H. Wade)