Image: public domain, courtesy of Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Boating Party

Mary Cassatt, 1893/94

A man in dark blue rows a bright boat across the shining sea, while a woman holds a baby on her lap, both in wide summer hats. Mary Cassatt painted it on the sunny Mediterranean coast of France, borrowing the flat colours and bold angles of Japanese prints.

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Did you know?

Cassatt painted it at Antibes, on the sunny Mediterranean coast of France.
Japanese woodblock prints, very fashionable in Paris at the time, inspired its flat colours, cropped edges and high viewpoint.
The horizon is placed very high, so the blue water fills almost the whole background.
It is one of the largest and most ambitious paintings Cassatt ever made.
In 1895 it was the centrepiece of her first solo exhibition in the United States, held in New York.
The collector Chester Dale bought it in 1929 and left it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1963.

About the artist

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was born near Pittsburgh in the United States, studied art in Philadelphia and made Paris her home for the rest of her life.

Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists, and from 1879 she showed her work with them, becoming famous for tender scenes of mothers and children.

She encouraged wealthy American friends to buy Impressionist paintings, and many of the works she helped choose for the Havemeyer family are now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Mary Cassatt ›

Where it is today: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington · Museum page