The freshness and immediacy of this portrait results as much from the six-year-old boy's animated pose and outward gaze as from the artist's lively pastel technique. Gardner Cassatt was the son of Mary Cassatt's younger brother. She drew the boy during one of his family's frequent visits to Paris, where she had settled in 1874.
Mary Cassatt’s (American, 1844–1926) paintings, pastels, and prints demonstrate her personal philosophy that “women should be someone and not something.” In domestic scenes, Cassatt explores the lives and occupations of women, showing them as active and engaged figures. She depicts women reading, caregivers bathing children, and ladies enjoying tea, sealing a letter, or driving a carriage.
Born in Pennsylvania, Cassatt was the only American to join the French Impressionists. Although she spent most of her life abroad, her family’s connections to Philadelphia have made the museum, which holds eighty-three artworks and numerous letters by Cassatt, an important center for her work.
Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art
