Notes
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By the first decade of the twentieth century, Mary Cassatt was known principally for her paintings of mothers and children. While the artist's work in the 1870s had reflected her interest in the experience of modern women in Parisian society, in the 1880s her emphasis began to shift from the public to the private spaces of women's lives, and thus to the quiet, intimate moments spent within the domestic realm. Depictions of motherhood, largely comprised of simple, daily interactions between mothers and their children, were a natural outcome of Cassatt's movement into the private sphere, as these shared moments played a significant role in women's experience of modern life. As Griselda Pollock has stated, Cassatt was able "to render visible the non-heroic, familiar, transient situations which could encode 'domestic intimacies' or a sense of childhood's uncertain steps toward emergent self-consciousness, or the perpetual strangeness of the relation between adult and child enacted through a thousand tiny rituals of daily life." (Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Life, London, 1998, p. 23)
Though it was for this subject of mothers and children that Cassatt had achieved recognition prior to the turn of the century, it was in the mature period of her career that the theme took on an increased importance, consuming much of her focus and supporting her broad popularity. By this time, Cassatt's celebrated reputation as one of America's most important expatriate artists had extended from France to the United States, a result of both a trip to her native country in 1898 and the thriving international market for her work, which was facilitated by such transatlantic dealers as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard.
The present work, Mother and Two Children, is exemplary of the confident yet sensitive manner in which Cassatt executed her mature paintings, as well as her increasing interest in more complex compositional strategies and a classical sensibility, all of which characterize this important period in the artist's oeuvre. Perhaps Cassatt's greatest achievement with works such as this, however, was her distinct ability to imbue such images with a spirit that was at once timeless and modern, as she drew on centuries of art historical precedents and yet transformed the traditional and familiar subject of maternity to reflect the particular cultural moment, and thus the modern era, in which she lived.
Having set sail for France at her earliest opportunity in 1866 after several years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Cassatt was granted quick acceptance to Parisian art circles, and had her first public success at the Salon of 1868. Her work continued to be accepted at the Salon, and eventually captured the eye of Edgar Degas, who invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists, and to join the group in forging a new mode of painting that broke from the conventions and strictures of the Academy. Thereafter Cassatt's work became increasingly reflective of the tenets of Impressionism--an attention to light and atmospheric effects, spontaneous and broken brushstrokes, a softer palette, and a turn to scenes of everyday life. It was at the 1881 Impressionist exhibition that Cassatt first exhibited her depictions of mothers and children, which would become her signature subject, to great acclaim.
The mother and child motif has been one to which, over the course of several centuries, artists have returned time and again. The familiar image of the Madonna and Child is ubiquitous in early religious iconography and in the art of the Medieval and Renaissance periods in particular. In her nineteenth century book titled Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts, Anna Jameson describes motherhood "as subject so consecrated by its antiquity, so hallowed by its profound significance, so endeared by its associations with the softest and deepest of our human sympathies, that the mind has never wearied of its repetition, nor the eye become satiated with its beauty." (as quoted in N.M. Mathews, Mary Cassatt, New York, 1987, p. 76) To be sure, the unique intimacy inherent in the bond between a mother and her child, and the resulting poignancy in artistic depictions of this relationship, has historically lent the subject an ageless and universal appeal for artists and viewers alike. Maternité was also a theme that enjoyed particular vogue at the end of the nineteenth century among both French and American artists with whom Cassatt associated. However, what distinguished her work from that of a number of her peers, as observed by the critic Royal Cortissoz, was that it remarkably "acknowledged sentiment, but avoided sentimentality." (Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Life, p. 18)
Indeed, such works as Mother and Two Children convey the inimitable tenderness and sensuality often present in a mother's interaction with her children. But, it was without any sense of cloying sentimentality, clichéd anecdote, or over-romanticization that Cassatt achieved these ends. Rather, through her thoughtful focus on the exchanges of gesture, expression, and gaze between each figure, Cassatt was able to capture the psychological nuances and emotional complexities that characterize familial relationships. Dr. Pollock remarks, "Her figure compositions discover both the tension in, and the pleasure of, interactions between children and adults who are emotionally bonded, while being at radically different moments of psychological development and life-cycle." (Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Life, p. 16) The artist's interest in contemplative psychological states, evident in her early portraits and depictions of contemporary young women, now extended to the various roles enacted within the domestic situation: in Mother and Two Children, the mother's loving gaze is directed at her baby, who looks inquisitively at his elder sister, whose attachment to her mother is indicated by a gentle embrace.
Never having had children herself, it is curious that this subject was of such compelling interest for Cassatt that she would remain so closely engaged with its portrayal throughout her career. The artist's continued concern with depicting mothers and children, particularly after the turn of the century, has often been attributed to various factors. The loss of her own mother in 1895, with whom she had shared a special bond, is said to have been deeply devastating for her, and thus these images may have been an expression of the artist's own nostalgia for her mother's care. Cassatt's advocacy of the women's suffrage movement also may have been an impetus for her allusion to the important societal role women played in their child-rearing duties. And certainly, her proliferation of variations on the theme was encouraged by strong public demand, and thus by her dealers' promptings. But also, as Nancy Mowll Mathews has noted, it may have reflected a strong interest that Cassatt shared with her friend Louisine Havemeyer at this time in the art of the Old Masters. (Mary Cassatt, p. 121)
In the 1890s Cassatt had begun acting as an art advisor to the Havemeyers and continued to do so with increased frequency after the turn of the century, aiding the American collectors in their endeavors to acquire works by both historic and modern masters. This role occasionally sent Cassatt to Italy and Spain with the couple, in pursuit of important paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early in her training Cassatt had spent time in Italy and Spain immersing herself in the art of the Old Masters, and her engagement with the grand traditions of Western art history continued throughout her career. But her renewed exposure with the Havemeyers to such works as those by Velázquez, Titian, and El Greco seems to have been particularly influential on her work during this mature period. Dr. Mathews has noted a shift in style and compositional strategies toward "grander effects in the handling of space and proportion" in this later period. (Mary Cassatt, p. 124) This is evidenced in Mother and Two Children in the increased allowance of spatial depth as opposed to the compressed spaces of her earlier scenes, an emphasis on material reality rather than the airy abstraction of her earlier brushstrokes, a greater interest in the texture and cut of materials seen in the elaborate gold and rose-colored gowns of the mother and young girl, and, significantly, a return to traditional modeling and chiaroscuro effects through the use of brown and black pigment, signaling a departure from her prior interest in Impressionism. (Mary Cassatt, pp. 124-25)
In addition, during this period Cassatt took great care in deliberately assembling her compositions: "She selected her models and set up situations in her studio that she could examine and paint a representation, a mise en toile, a composition in the old academic sense, and not just a casually observed or spontaneously formed scene." (Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Women, p. 16) The pyramidal composition in the present work likely acknowledges a classical arrangement employed by Old Master painters in Madonna and Child images, as seen in Titian's Madonna and Child with St. Mary Magdalen (Fig. 1, circa 1555, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia).
The particular group of models seen in Mother and Two Children seems to have held a distinct significance for Cassatt, and reappears in several of her works of the period, as seen in After the Bath (Fig. 2, circa 1901, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio) and Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby (Fig. 3, circa 1901, Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut). After 1900 Cassatt preferred to use as models children from Mesnil-Theribus, the village near her country home fifty miles northwest of Paris. In 1901 she began to frequently employ Sara, the young golden-haired girl pictured in the present painting, who according to Adelyn Breeskin, was a granddaughter of one of the former presidents of the French Republic, Emile Loubet. (Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné, Washington, D.C., 1970, p. 150) The sweetness of Sara's face, the ethereality of her features, and her reportedly good-natured demeanor evidently rendered her a favored model for Cassatt during these years.
A testament to her artistic virtuosity and also to her profound reverence for the maternal bond, Mother and Two Children is a superlative example of Mary Cassatt's insightful skill in updating a time-honored theme to not only reflect her own historic moment, but to appeal to audiences of our own as well. Her ability to infuse such a scene with a quiet dignity and realistic sincerity, far transcending any note of trite sentimentality, is where the art historical integrity of this work lies, and will thereby withstand the test of time.
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