Picturing America: Mary Cassatt, “The Boating Party”

Mary Cassatt worked as an American artist in Europe and was a respected member of the Impressionist Movement. During her time working in Europe Cassatt focused primarily on women and children as subject matter. In Cassatt’s painting “The Boating Party” the artist painted what might be viewed as a family outing—mother/wife, father/husband, and child. Through examination of this image the viewer is free to explore through dress, gesture and composition, what this group of three people at a “boating party” conveys about relationships as they exist within a family, between people who know each other well enough to take an afternoon outing together, as well as explore ideas about relationships within Western European culture as it might contrast or compare to other cultures not represented by this image.