Children Playing on the Beach

1884

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

Two pale-skinned little girls sit back-to-back on a sandy beach, almost filling the width of this vertical painting. The girls wear matching pale, ice-blue pinafores over short sleeve, ocean-blue dresses. Both sit with their legs stretched in front of them and angled to our right. The girl closest to us, to our left, looks down at the denim-blue pail and wooden shovel she holds between her ankles. She holds the long-handled shovel in her near hand with the end inside the pail. She has a chubby, flushed, round face with blond hair and rosy arms and legs. She wears black shoes and appears to have a brown sock on her near leg but a dark blue sock on the other. Her companion sits just beyond her and to our right with her body turned away from us. Her wide-brimmed straw hat is trimmed with a tomato-red ribbon tied in a bow at the front. The hat hides her face, and her outstretched legs are encased in olive-green stockings. Her near hand reaches across her lap to grab the pail sitting on the far side of her legs. The beach meets the pale blue and aquamarine ocean in the upper third of the painting. A patch of strokes and daubs of dark blue and peach near the upper left and a tan wedge in the water to our right are painted loosely along the shoreline. Two white sailboats and a horizontal white dash with three dark blue dots drift on the water. The artist signed the lower right, “Mary Cassatt.”

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By the time Cassatt exhibited this painting at the eighth and final impressionist exhibition in 1886, her reputation as a painter of mothers and children had been well established. Critics had long commented on her ability to portray her subjects in a tender, yet unsentimental, way: "Oh, my God! those babies! How those portraits have made my flesh crawl, time and again!—A whole passel of English and French smearers has painted them in such stupid, pretentious poses! . . . For the first time, thanks to Mlle. Cassatt, I have seen effigies of enchanting tots, calm and bourgeois scenes, painted with an utterly charming sort of delicate tenderness." Cassatt's focus on a limited range of subjects allowed her to experiment with both the formal elements and painterly qualities of a composition. Her interest in Japanese prints and the process of printmaking can be seen in much of her work after 1883, including Children Playing on the Beach. In this work, Cassatt tightly cropped the scene, tilted the picture plane forward, and reduced the number of objects in the background to draw attention to the two little girls digging in the sand. Absorbed in their activity, they embody the naturalistic attitude prevalent in both art and literature of the time.

Various shades of blue—from the deep electric blue of the dress and shoes to the soft, diffused blue of the ocean—are used throughout the work. Accents of white convey the presence of sunlight bouncing off the dresses, hats, and pails of the little girls. While particular attention is paid to the building of form through color and line in the foreground, the background is reduced to its essential elements through a series of thinly painted scumbles, leaving areas of the priming layer exposed.

Aspects of the painting suggest that it is a nostalgic tribute to Cassatt's beloved sister, Lydia, who died in 1882. Cassatt was so distraught over Lydia's death that she did not paint for six months. Without revealing the identity of the little girls specifically, Cassatt depicted them in a manner that implies that they are related. Playing close together, the girls are comfortable with each other's presence. By positioning them side by side in nearly identical outfits, Cassatt established both a compositional and psychological relationship between the two figures.

As the primary caretaker of her elderly parents and older sister, Cassatt spent much of her adult life juggling the seemingly incompatible roles of nurse-companion and independent artist. In 1884, Cassatt accompanied her ailing mother to Spain to seek the recuperative effects of the seaside climate. Children Playing on the Beach is generally believed to have been painted after her return. Although completed in the studio—x-radiograph studies reveal that Cassatt reworked almost every area of the canvas—the painting nonetheless conveys a sense of spontaneity and freshness. Such coastal scenes were popular among her impressionist contemporaries, but Cassatt rarely delved into the genre. This work, therefore, holds a place of singular importance within her oeuvre.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 97.4 × 74.2 cm (38 3/8 × 29 3/16 in.)
    framed: 117.79 × 94.3 × 6.99 cm (46 3/8 × 37 1/8 × 2 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1970.17.19

More About this Artwork

Article:  Summer in Art: Dive into Scenes of the Season

Artists from Mary Cassatt to Roy Lichtenstein have spent the warmer months making works about busy beaches, ripe raspberries, fresh flowers, and other signs of the season.

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

M. Portier; sold 4 April 1899 to (Durand-Ruel, Paris); sold 12 March 1910 to M. Lanquety; by inheritance to his godson, Pierre Marbeau [1901-1991], Paris.[1] Mr. and Mrs. Charles Durand-Ruel, Paris;[2] (Sam Salz, Inc., New York); sold 5 March 1965 to Ailsa Mellon Bruce;[3] bequest 1970 to NGA.
[1] Provenance provided in a letter dated 20 December 1977 from Charles Durand-Ruel, citing DR Paris stock number 5139.
[2] See 5 March 1965 invoice from Sam Salz in NGA curatorial file as well as a note to the file from NGA curator David E. Rust on 10 January 1983 which indicates he was told the painting was in the private collection of M. and Mme. Charles Durand-Ruel "for some time" before Salz acquired it from them.
[3] Acquisition information from Ailsa Mellon Bruce notebook, copy in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1886

  • La 8me Exposition de Peinture [Eighth Impressionist Exhibition], Paris, 1886, no. 11.

1907

  • Modern French Paintings, Manchester City Art Gallery, 1907-1908, no.71, as Children Playing on the Shore.

1966

  • French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 120, repro

1970

  • Mary Cassatt 1844-1926, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,1970, no. 33, repro.

1976

  • Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin; Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Brooklyn Museum, 1976-1977, no. 91, repro.

1982

  • Solitude: Inner Visions in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, 1982, no. 5, repro.

1986

  • The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986, no. 139, repro.

  • Capolavori Impressionisti dei Musei Americani, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1986-1987, no. 2, repro.

1989

  • Impressionisti della National Gallery of Art di Washington, Ala Napoleonica e Museo Correr, Venice; Palazzo Reale, Milan, 1989, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1990

  • Französische Impressionisten und ihre Wegbereiter aus der National Gallery of Art, Washington und dem Cincinnati Art Museum, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1990, no. 55, repro.

1992

  • From El Greco to Cézanne: Masterpieces of European Painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metroplitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Greece, Athens, 1992-1993, no. 58, repro.

1998

  • Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998-1999, no. 47, repro., as Children on the Shore.

2007

  • Impressionists by the Sea, Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, 2007-2008, no. 69, repro.

2011

  • Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The National Art Center, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2011, no. 6, repro.

2012

  • Un été au bord de l'eau: Loisirs et impressionnisme, Muée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, 2012-2013, no. 10, repro.

2014

  • American Impressionism: A New Vision, 1880-1900, Musée des impressionnismes Giverny, Giverny; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2014 - 2015, no. p. 57.

2016

  • Mary Cassatt Retrospective, Yokohama Museum of Art; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 2016, no. 007, repro.

2017

  • Women Artists in Paris: 1850-1900, Denver Art Museum; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2017-2018, pl. 35

Bibliography

1966

  • Young, Mahonri Sharp. "The Mellon Collections: The Great Years of French Painting." Apollo 83 (June 1966): 433, repro.

1970

  • Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970, no. 131.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 33, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: repro. 137, 139.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 564, no. 862, color repro., as Two Children at the Seashore.

1991

  • Coman, Florence E. Joie de Vivre: French Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1991: no. 22, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 39, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: Mary Cassatt

Wikidata ID

Q20189683

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