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Europe 1800 - 1900
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Impressionism- A beginner's guide to Impressionism
- What does “Impressionism” mean?
- How the Impressionists got their name
- Impressionist color
- Impressionist pictorial space
- Japonisme
- Degas, The Bellelli Family
- Degas, At the Races in the Countryside
- Degas, The Dance Class
- Degas, Visit to a Museum
- Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers
- Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day
- Caillebotte, Man at his Bath
- Morisot, The Cradle
- A summer day in Paris: Morisot's Hunting Butterflies
- Cassatt, In the Loge
- Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
- Cassatt, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge
- Cassatt, The Loge
- Cassatt, The Child's Bath
- Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure
- Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed
- How to recognize Monet: The Basin at Argenteuil
- Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise
- Monet, The Argenteuil Bridge
- Painting modern life: Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare
- Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare
- Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville
- Monet's Wheatstacks (Snow Effect, Morning): Getty conversations
- Monet, Poplars
- Monet, Rouen Cathedral Series
- Monet, Water Lilies
- How to Recognize Renoir: The Swing
- Renoir, La Loge
- Renoir, The Grands Boulevards
- Renoir, Moulin de la Galette
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Madame Charpentier and Her Children
- Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party
- Renoir, The Large Bathers
- Impressionism
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Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed
Mary Cassatt, Breakfast In Bed, 1897 (Huntington Library) Speakers: Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- I get the sense that the look of the mother is that of sorrow. Does anyone else get this impression? I wonder if Mary Cassatt is perhaps alluding to an early form of feminism here by drawing attention to the domesticity that pre-women's-lib women would have had thrust upon them as their only choice in life. Perhaps then this reflects on Mary Cassatt's own fears of being expected to rear children and to cast aside her ambitions to be an artist (not that those things are mutually exclusive TODAY, but that wasn't always the case....).(6 votes)
- I see a mother who has not had a full night's sleep dealing with a wide-awake child who has wakened with the dawn. Grabbing a few more minutes of rest while a child is otherwise occupied is an experience widely known by parents.(8 votes)
- I have had a print of this piece on the wall in my house for quite a while. There are subliminal, spectral looking images of children's faces in the bed clothes around the subjects. I wonder if any one has noticed this and even better if they know anything about them. It was on the wall for several years before I noticed the faces but when I did it was rather startling. They are there and there is no doubt in my mind Mary put them there intentionally and carefully. I know it sounds a little crazy but have a look at a large print and you will see them. Thanks(2 votes)
- I love the commentary by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. But, I'm going to offer my first disagreement with the esteemed instructors here. I don't see the mother as looking passed the the child but looking directly at her. To me, I get the feeling the child has woken up the mother, is already very awake and Mom wasn't quite ready for it. The child seems blissfully unaware of the daily responsibilities of adults and Mom seems to look at her thinking "too early" and maybe even contemplating a bit of sadness that the same is eventually in store for her child when she becomes an adult.
Am I off base with my take on this piece?(1 vote)- From the author:I think there is plenty of room for your lovely interpretation.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(jazzy music) Male: We're in Pasadena, California at Female: Actually, I think it's San Marino. Male: Okay, we're in
San Marino, California at the Huntington Library. We're looking at a
painting by Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed, which is
dated to approximately 1894. It's really a gorgeous little painting. Female: It is; it's very beautiful. We see a woman lying
in bed, just the upper part of her body, and she's got her arms around, I don't know, a three-year-old, a two- or three-year-old. Male: Two-year-old maybe, yeah. Very red-cheeked. Female: Yeah, very rosy-cheeked. The mother's sort of looking
off out of the canvas in a very wistful way. Male: Whereas the child is absolutely present in the space,
and upright and active. Female: That's true. Male: She is holding the child almost with her arm like a seat belt. Female: Right, so she
doesn't slip off the bed. Male: Sort of restraining the child. Female: It's true, you
can see that there's something on the mother's
mind, but not the child. Male: No, it's true. The child is really in this moment, and the mother has a much
broader kind of perspective. It's this incredible kind of contrast between their attentions
that is really intimate and really powerfully
expressed, and beautifully. Female: There's a lot of Finish, I think, or more Finish in their faces, but then all of these
loose luscious brushstrokes in the whitish blue of
the pillow and the bed, and even in the flesh
of their skin is hatch marks of paint that are very visible. Male: There's something
incredibly abstract about the way that the
volumetric forms of the limbs are in contrast to the relative flatness of her nightgown, of the child's outfit, and the sheets and the
pillows, all of which is white. There's this really complex
interplay of those limbs against this relatively
abstract painterly set of forms. Female: Although there
is hatching of blues and red in the tones of their skin. But it's true, there
is more painterliness. It looks like a very casual moment. You can see if you just study
it a little more carefully how carefully composed it is. Male: Absolutely. Female: There's this diagonal line formed by the mother's body,
but then there's blocks Male: The side of her face, yes. Female: The side of her face, right. These blocks of green that frame it. Male: And darkness. Actually, and the fourth
corner is picked up by kind of a deeper tone
in the sheets as well. Female: So she's sort of locked into place by those geometric forms, and then the cup and saucer. Male: But I'm really taken by this notion of attention and the relative difference of the attentions of the two figures, but also in the way
that Cassatt seems to be constructing our visual attention, focusing on those faces, on the limbs to a lesser extent to the white and to the greens around them. There seems to be this really wonderful kind of agreement between the subject and actually the choices that the artist made in representation. Female: Yup, it's a beautiful painting. (jazzy music)