Femme en robe rose et enfant dans un jardin, painted in 1909 by Mary Cassatt, is a majestic representation of the artist's most iconic theme: motherhood. Mother and child are brought to the fore by a smart colour play, the pink pallor of the skin accompanied by a marbling texture. Velvety skins on a green background situate the power of motherhood in its rightful place within the nature of the world. A sensual softness accentuates the mother's arms and hands which surround and support the back of her child. Through her brush strokes and light inspired by the Impressionist movement, the artist depicts a modesty drawing the viewer into a sweet reverie which cannot leave then unmoved. Even if Cassatt keeps some of the traditional elements of the Madonna and Child theme, she also adds her own interpretation with unfinished lines, form and new chromatic palette. Here, the theme of motherhood reinstates the importance of women within the human circle of life. Through this message, the painter affirms her ideologies and the elevation of the female condition within the society.
A dominant personality, bold, independent, and opposed to the conventional art, Mary Cassatt was able to stamp the male world of French art with her talent. Attracted by her gracefulness and genius, Edgar Degas invited her to join the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1879. Later on, her cultural duality and painting technique also caught the attention of the renowned art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, where she had her first solo exhibition in 1891, and where our presented work was exhibited in 1914. Inspired by the lines and brush strokes of Edouard Manet, she rapidly established her own style, focusing on paintings from another world, a world that male painters could not understand. Cassatt excelled in the depiction of motherhood and the immediacy of daily scenes. An explorer of pictorial forms, attentive to the emancipation of women and equal rights for the sexes, she was the only American artist and one of the rarest women who joined the Impressionist movement.
Mary Cassatt's paintings are, nowadays, part of the most predominant museums in the world such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris as well as the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
A dominant personality, bold, independent, and opposed to the conventional art, Mary Cassatt was able to stamp the male world of French art with her talent. Attracted by her gracefulness and genius, Edgar Degas invited her to join the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1879. Later on, her cultural duality and painting technique also caught the attention of the renowned art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, where she had her first solo exhibition in 1891, and where our presented work was exhibited in 1914. Inspired by the lines and brush strokes of Edouard Manet, she rapidly established her own style, focusing on paintings from another world, a world that male painters could not understand. Cassatt excelled in the depiction of motherhood and the immediacy of daily scenes. An explorer of pictorial forms, attentive to the emancipation of women and equal rights for the sexes, she was the only American artist and one of the rarest women who joined the Impressionist movement.
Mary Cassatt's paintings are, nowadays, part of the most predominant museums in the world such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris as well as the National Gallery of Art in Washington.