Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926) - Child Drinking Milk from a Bowl

Signed with Artist's initials ‘M.C.’ bottom right, pastel on paper laid down to canvas
18 ¼ x 15 ¼ in. (46.4 x 38.7cm).
Executed circa 1890.

Provenance

Collection of H. Leonard Simmons.
Acquired directly from the above circa 1935.
Collection of Mr. Butler, New York.
By descent in the Butler family.
Kennedy & Co., New York, New York.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Richard S. DuPont, New York.
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, New York.
Acquired directly from the above.
Property from the Wister Family, Main Line, Philadelphia.

Exhibition

“The Paintings of Mary Cassatt; a Benefit Exhibition for the Development of the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.” M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 1-26, 1966 (as dated 1872).
“Mary Cassatt: An American Observer” (A loan exhibition for the benefit of the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, New York, October 3-27, 1984 (as from 1868).

Literature

Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings, Smithsonian Institution Press Washington, D.C., 1970, p. 92, no. 165 (illustrated).

Lot Essay

The second half of the 19th century saw a resurgence in the use of the pastel, whose spontaneity was greatly appreciated by landscapists, working outdoors on the motif, as well as by portraitists, who could shorten their posing sessions. Mary Cassatt confirmed it to her friend Harris Whittemore in 1898 when painting some members of his family: it is “the most satisfactory medium for [portraying] children.” She was first introduced to the medium by her friend and mentor, Edgar Degas, who produced over 700 pastels in his career, and pushed its experimentation to the fullest. Later in life, Cassatt recalled the decisive influence Degas had on her work: "I used to go and flatten my nose against the window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it."

This beautiful pastel is a formidable example of Cassatt’s mature style and expert handling of pastel. By its tight crop and subject, a profile portrait of a child drinking his bowl of milk, the work channels the aesthetic of 18th-century masters such as Rosalba Carriera and Jean-Étienne Liotard, who, together, personified the “golden age” of pastel. Although she is now best remembered for her depictions of mothers with their children, Cassatt earned significant praise during her lifetime for her portraits of individual children, such as the present work. By isolating her young subjects, divorced from their familial context, Cassatt was able to capture the physical and psychological qualities specific to childhood and to “render visible the non-heroic, familiar, transient situations which could encode ‘domestic intimacies’ or a sense of childhood’s uncertain steps toward emergent self-consciousness," says Griselda Pollock.

While the present work fits within the 19th-century Academic tradition of depicting young children drinking their milk–a symbol of good health and hindered innocence–particularly associated with the peasant class as exemplified by William Bouguereau's La Tasse de Lait (1879), La Soupe au Lait (1880), and Émile Munier's La Jatte de Lait (1881)–it is also resolutely modern as the child is not posing. Viewed in profile, his eyes avoid the viewer, and he seems rather absorbed in consuming his beverage. His hands are firmly gripping the bowl, a sign of his independence, but it is through his gaze–fierce, mischievous, unapologetic–that the boy's personality is apparent. His raised eyes and pout reveal a disgruntled child, who probably just woke up, or is moody or fussed that he is being summoned to finish his morning drink. Contrary to Bouguereau or Munier, Cassatt gives an impression of truth and spontaneity as if she had caught the child in a natural state rather than in a scene she had orchestrated. The image becomes even more striking as it is stripped from any context. The boy stands against an indistinct background; he does not appear in a rural setting, barefoot. The goal, for Cassatt, is not to foment a vision of an idyllic pastoral life to please affluent American collectors, but rather to tell the truth in an image that speaks to a universal feeling, to a fleeting moment, rather than to a specific time or context.

While the Catalogue Raisonné of Cassatt's work dates this pastel to 1890, which the expert handling of the powdery medium and the restricted palette of soft lavenders, lime and dark greens, and browns seem to support, past exhibitions have presented the work as from a much earlier period, 1869, when the artist was still in Paris and before she joined the first Impressionist exhibitions. While truth probably lies in the middle, making the work a contemporary of the aforementioned examples by Bouguereau and Munier, Cassatt has here produced an undeniably compelling portrait, technically superb and imbued with an arresting sense of intimacy, personality and innocence.