Existing comment:
Mary Cassatt
Child Picking a Fruit, 1893
A talented painter, pastelist, and printmaking, Mary Cassatt occupies a unique place in the history of American art. Her early alliance with the French impressionists -- she was the only American to exhibit with the avant-garde group in Paris -- established her reputation as one of this country's most important artists.
Child Picking a Fruit merges the subject that made Cassatt famous -- a young woman (possibly a mother) and child -- with her more ambitious examination of "modern woman," a topical theme at the turn of the century as the women's suffrage movement gained momentum. The image derives from the artist's now-lost Modern Woman mural commission, produced for the Woman's Building of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For this prestigious world's fair, Cassatt presented her allegorical subject in a three-panel lunette. The large central panel, Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge, featured women of different ages, clad in contemporary dress and communally harvesting fruit from an orchard. The deep-rooted association of women and children with the natural world appeared with greater frequency in turn-of-the-century imagery. |