The Family

This is an oil on canvas painting. The figures are arranged in a pyramid shape in the foreground, reminiscent of Renaissance Madonna and child groupings. Both the Mother and older daughter gaze at the baby. The baby looks at the older sister, or perhaps at the carnation she holds. The viewer is standing slightly above the seated figures. The background shows a path that leads into some trees, but only the bottoms of the trees are visible. The mother wears a violet dress with a wide lace collar; her two hands firmly hold the baby.		Mary Cassatt
American (1844-1926)
The Family, 1893
Oil on canvas
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
American Art
Location:  Exhibit, Gallery 274
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Dimensions:  H: 32 1/4 in, W: 26 1/8 in
Object ID: 71.498

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Mary Cassatt
Allegheny City, Pa. 1844-1926 Le Mesnil-Théribus, France
The Family, 1893
Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 × 26 1/8 in. (82 × 66.4 cm)
Signed lower right: Mary Cassatt
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.498

References: Zafran, 1978, no. 32; Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen et al., Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection, exhib. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993, pp. 216, 298, no. A50; Judith A. Barter et al., Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, exhib. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998-99, pp. 79-80, 91, 97, 151, 343, no. 71.

Independent and strong-willed, Mary Cassatt ignored Victorian expectations for women-notably marriage and motherhood-and instead pursued an exceptional career as a professional painter. Daughter of a well-to-do investment banker in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (today part of Pittsburgh), the young Cassatt first became interested in art during a lengthy stay in Europe with her family (1851-55). Returning to America, the Cassatts settled in Philadelphia, where her father, after much resistance, acceded to her wish to become an artist and allowed her to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Between 1866 and 1872 Cassatt returned twice to Europe, where she studied with Parisian painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Charles Chaplin, and also studied and copied the Old Master paintings in the museums of France, Spain, Belgium, and Italy. By 1875 she had resolved to live abroad and pursue her artistic career as an expatriate, a decision made by many American painters of her generation (see objects 71.838, 71.502).
Basing her career in Paris, Cassatt initially followed a traditional path, regularly submitting paintings to the Salon from 1868 to 1876. A change began to occur, however, as she became increasingly interested in the works of Edgar Degas and his fellow Impressionists. When Degas came to her studio in 1877 to invite her to join the avant-garde artist group, Cassatt eagerly accepted:
At last I could work with absolute independence, without considering the eventual opinion of a [Salon] jury. I had already recognized who were my true masters. I admired Manet, Courbet and Degas. I hated conventional art. I began to live.
Cassatt was the only American to exhibit with the Impressionists-between 1879 and 1886 she took part in all but one of their shows-and she sustained a lifelong friendship with Degas.
Though Cassatt painted several pictures of women sewing, taking tea, or attending the opera, after 1887 her dominant theme was maternity. Among the most famous of these warm and intimate images is The Family, now in the Chrysler Museum of Art. In this work a mother poses with her baby and young daughter in a verdant, parklike setting. The subtle interplay of glances and gestures unites the figures compositionally and underscores their harmony as a family.
Cassatt probably derived the classic, pyramidal composition from Renaissance prototypes, such as Botticelli's painting of the Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist(Louvre, Paris). Yet, as Joyce Szabo has noted, "The asymmetrical arrangement with the viewer's angle of vision slightly above the group, the cropping of figures and trees at the edge of the canvas, and the overall linear emphasis are attributes both Cassatt and Degas adapted from Japanese prints."
Though Cassatt did not date the Chrysler painting, she documented the time of its creation in a letter she wrote on November 14, 1893, to her friend Harris Whittemore. In the letter she records having "painted three pictures of naked babies this summer, two of the three are out of [doors]. . . . Of the three pictures there is one [ The Family] of 3 figures." Thus, Cassatt began the Chrysler painting only months after completing Modern Woman, her mural for the Woman's Building of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The style of The Family-its bright, strong colors flatly applied and contained by delicate contours-is indeed typical of her mature work of the 1890s, and all three of the figures in the painting had already appeared, with variations, in the mural. Cassatt's preparatory pencil drawing for the baby in The Familyis in the collection of Gordon K. Allison, New York.
In a letter written from France on February 15, 1894, Cassatt remarked that The Family was then being offered for sale at the New York gallery of Durand-Ruel. Later that year it was purchased by Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer, who had long been friends of Cassatt and who, with her encouragement and guidance, amassed one of the earliest and finest collections of Impressionist art in the United States.
JCH
 

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