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Lot Essay
Historians have offered various interpretations of Mary Cassatt's prevailing choice of children for the subject matter of her work. Whether this choice was motivated by the artist's anxiety over her childless status, or whether it was simply the natural choice for a woman artist in the late nineteenth century, the works themselves have consistently merited high acclaim and compared favorably to the work of the other leaders of the Impressionist movement. Indeed, the strength of her work led a contemporary critic to assert that "the artist successfully avoided the sentimentality of most English and French 'doodlers,' who, in his view, painted infants in fatuous, pretentious poses." (J.A. Barter, "Mary Cassatt: Themes, Sources, and the Modern Woman," in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Chicago, Illinois, 1998, p. 69)
Cassatt, who may have begun to experiment with pastel while she was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1860s, mastered the medium early in her career. Her early works in the medium "display a studied execution and a sophistication unusual of a beginner. The colors are pure and unmuddied, the line is sure, and the subjects and compositions are complex." (H.K. Stratis, "Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Chicago, Illinois, 1998, p. 213) During the course of her prolific career, the artist produced countless works in pastel, in which the composition consisted of a figure with a sketched background. In Child with Bangs in a Blue Dress as well as numerous other works, the artist would "carefully blend and stump the pastel to achieve gradations of tone in the shadows, while using a precise line to record facial features. [She would use] looser strokes [to] evoke, rather than delineate, the sitter's surroundings. . . [Indeed] she would always retain a high degree of finish in her sitters' faces, [yet] she abandoned this treatment in their garments and surroundings. Certainly this attachment to physiognomic detail was driven in part by her desire as a portraitist to render an accurate likeness." ("Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, pp. 213-9)
Some interpretations of Cassatt's pastels depicting children focus on the relationship between the medium and subject matter. Executed circa 1910, this work is from the period in her career when Cassatt "pared down her earlier explorations with materials and reduced her techniques to only a few. Writing to Harris Whittemore in 1898, the year she traveled to the United States and produced a number of pastel portraits on commission, she commented that pastel was 'the most satisfactory medium for [portraying] children.' It may have been the velvety and tactile qualities of the medium that led her to associate its use with the depiction of youth. The spontaneity that pastel allowed was surely an advantage when drawing children who could not or would not sit still for long periods of time." ("Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, p. 221) Regardless of the motivation behind the artist's choice of a particular medium or subject, Child with Bangs in a Blue Dress is among the artist's strongest achievements.
This pastel will be included in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the works of Mary Cassatt.
Cassatt, who may have begun to experiment with pastel while she was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1860s, mastered the medium early in her career. Her early works in the medium "display a studied execution and a sophistication unusual of a beginner. The colors are pure and unmuddied, the line is sure, and the subjects and compositions are complex." (H.K. Stratis, "Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Chicago, Illinois, 1998, p. 213) During the course of her prolific career, the artist produced countless works in pastel, in which the composition consisted of a figure with a sketched background. In Child with Bangs in a Blue Dress as well as numerous other works, the artist would "carefully blend and stump the pastel to achieve gradations of tone in the shadows, while using a precise line to record facial features. [She would use] looser strokes [to] evoke, rather than delineate, the sitter's surroundings. . . [Indeed] she would always retain a high degree of finish in her sitters' faces, [yet] she abandoned this treatment in their garments and surroundings. Certainly this attachment to physiognomic detail was driven in part by her desire as a portraitist to render an accurate likeness." ("Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, pp. 213-9)
Some interpretations of Cassatt's pastels depicting children focus on the relationship between the medium and subject matter. Executed circa 1910, this work is from the period in her career when Cassatt "pared down her earlier explorations with materials and reduced her techniques to only a few. Writing to Harris Whittemore in 1898, the year she traveled to the United States and produced a number of pastel portraits on commission, she commented that pastel was 'the most satisfactory medium for [portraying] children.' It may have been the velvety and tactile qualities of the medium that led her to associate its use with the depiction of youth. The spontaneity that pastel allowed was surely an advantage when drawing children who could not or would not sit still for long periods of time." ("Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels" in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, p. 221) Regardless of the motivation behind the artist's choice of a particular medium or subject, Child with Bangs in a Blue Dress is among the artist's strongest achievements.
This pastel will be included in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the works of Mary Cassatt.