The Boating Party was painted by American painter Mary Cassatt in the winter of 1893/1894 at Antibes, on the Mediterranean coast of France. It is representative of Cassatt's finest period. The Boating Party was painted only two years after she, as a mature and accomplished artist, had had her first one-person exhibition.
In The Boating Party, with the high horizon, off-center placement of figures, elimination of unnecessary detail, and preoccupation with surface patterns and contours among other reveal her awareness of Japanese art. She may further have have drawn upon Edouard Manet's Boating (1874, Metropolitan Museum of Art), a painting that she greatly admired. Like Manet, she used a close-up view, with the nearest portion of the boat cut off at the edge of the image. But her dazzling color scheme and broad, flat brushwork are post-impressionist in flavor--the color preferences of Gauguin and Van Gogh.
As in all the most interesting of Cassatt's paintings, the composition of The Boating Party is both unconventional and arresting. In this composition, the darkly clad figure of the boatman looms large in the foreground, almost appearing to project out of the canvas. The sail at the left, the oar, and the bow of the boat all point to the head of the child who, in a pose typical of the artist, is shown sprawling gracelessly, yet naturally, in the mother's lap. Despite the simple subject and the centrality of the contented baby, the painting exudes a peculiar psychological intensity because of the enigmatic relationship between the figures so closely tied together in the composition. In conception, execution, and sheer size, this is surely Cassatt's boldest work.
The painting is today part of the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
