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Her focus was on a way to amplify the play of light on the surface of the work. The fabric of the dress has bold strokes of red, orange and blue and even the white border design, reminiscent of a Greek key, is more suggestive than illustrative.Ĭassatt’s collaboration with Degas may have introduced her to his technique for creating a luster in hair and flesh tones of his subjects with his use of moisture which compacted the pastel powder into a solid glossy surface. The rendering of the face and the dress has an abstracted quality, one not found in the smooth, glowing flesh and hair of her earlier work. Her face, too, lacks the refined touch of her earlier portraits, instead Cassatt focuses on the contrast between the pinks of the skins and the green and violets in the work. She also chose to employ her blue underpainting along the arms, back and bottom of the child in the mother’s arms. Down in the bottom corner underneath the mother’s embracing arm Mary left a hint of her precise charcoal underdrawing, not bothering to conceal, instead choosing to apply broken, unblended overlapping strokes. And there is the beginning of a modernist perspective: the artist seeking to convey their reaction to what they saw.
#Pastel background skin#
Mother and Child begins with the deliberate use of complementary colors-the violet of the mother’s dress against the vivid green background.Īdd in the radiant pink flesh tones clashing with blue undertones in both skin and dress.Įarly critics referred to her undertones as looking dirty, but in reality the use of undertones was an outgrowth of her studies in Italy where she saw its use by the Italian Primitives, of the late thirteenth to the fifteenth century.Ĭassatt's mature work was often daring, seeking new ways to express what she saw and felt. Then, too, Mary also demonstrated her innate and well-honed drawing skills, here and in most of her works. Mother and Child (1914), one of her later pieces, exemplifies Cassatt’s interest in not just creating a portrait but in experimenting with a variety of techniques, some discussed last time, such as contrasting the finished carefully rendered areas of her work, areas which often demonstrated a luminous quality, with the areas deliberately left incomplete. From the 1890’s on, Cassatt had become fascinated with the relationship of mother and child and from 1900 on, this was the main subject of her work. Today a study of a famous example of Mary’s mother and child work, recently restored and part of the collection of the Metropolitan and a look at the work from mainly an artistic perspective. The late 1880’s into the 1900’s saw Cassatt develop her characteristic style-a complex modernist style with areas deliberately left unfinished along with high level draftsmanship-and subject-portraits, specifically mother and child-for which she is most famous. It was in 1894 that Mary purchased Chateau Beaufresne where she and her family summered for the remainder of her life. The 1890’s found Cassatt recognized as a powerful artist based on the strength of her own highly developed skills including her experiments with print making which were highly influenced by a show of Japanese masters. A joint Journal project they pursued at that time led to a lifelong friendship. To date we’ve covered Mary’s life from her first successes as an independent American woman artist living in Europe in the 1870’s through her growing frustration with the Paris Salon’s politics in the late 1870’s and her joining the Impressionist Movement after Degas’ invitation to join their 1878 exhibition. Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 to 1926) was born in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh) and lived most of her adult life in France where she became one of the leading women members of the Impressionist movement and a close friend of Edgar Degas. Currently, a continuing look at a second famous woman pastelist-Mary Cassatt (Rosalba Carriera of Venice who was already discussed at length was first.) Pastels’ origins lead back to northern Italy during the Renaissance including works by Da Vinci continuing on into the Rococo Era, after which pastels use faded until it’s rediscovery by Degas and Whistler, two important Impressionists along with our ongoing exploration of today’s artist-Mary Cassatt. Mary Cassatt- Pastels-Later years/Mother & Child StudiesĪ while ago we began an exploration of two-dimensional art media and have been focusing on the lesser-known medium of pastel.