Audio Stop 216

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We look slightly down onto a woman dressed in golden yellows, sitting in a pale green chair, with a nude child sitting in her lap as they both gaze into a mirror in this vertical portrait painting. Both the people have pale, peachy skin. The chair is angled to our left so the woman’s knees and child cant down toward the lower left corner of the composition, and the woman leans onto the arm closer to us. The chair is painted mint green and the rose-pink upholstery is visible on the seat and a corner behind the woman’s shoulder. To our right, the woman’s vibrant, copper-colored hair is pulled loosely to the back of her head. She has a rounded nose, flushed cheeks, and her full, coral-pink lips are closed. Her long dress has a low, U-shaped neckline. The fabric shimmers from pale, cucumber green to light sunshine yellow. The sleeves of the dress split over the shoulder and a second long, goldenrod-yellow sleeve falls from her elbow off the bottom edge of the canvas. An oversized sunflower, larger than the woman’s face, is affixed to her dress near her left shoulder, closer to us. She looks with dark eyes down toward the small, gold-rimmed mirror she holds in her right hand, farther from us. The child also holds the handle of the mirror with both hands, and in the reflection, the child looks back at us with dark eyes, a button nose, and pink lips. The child’s hair in the reflection is the same copper color as the woman’s, but the child on her lap has blond, shoulder-length hair. The woman rests one hand on the child’s left shoulder, closer to us. The child has a rounded belly and smooth, rosy limbs. The woman and child are reflected in a second mirror hanging on the wall alongside them, opposite us. Their reflections are very loosely painted. The wall behind the pair is sage green across the top and it shifts to fawn brown across the bottom. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially in the woman’s dress and hair, and are more blended in the bodies and faces. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Mary Cassatt.”

Mary Cassatt

Woman with a Sunflower, c. 1905

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 86

Artist Maria Berrio and curatorial fellow Nikki Georgopulos discuss the relationships and symbols present in Mary Cassatt’s intimate painting.

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:
American artist Mary Cassatt made this painting around 1905. Known for her images of women and children, Cassatt was progressive both in her modern, Impressionist technique and her feminist views on politics and society.

NIKKI GEORGOPULOS:
I’m Nikki Georgopulos and I'm the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow for French Paintings.

Whether or not the child and the woman were related, they have this very close, intimate relationship. Cassatt was concerned with the future, and so I think that in this way we can understand this image as one of guidance.

MARIA BERRIO:
My name is Maria Berrio and I am an artist. And if you look at that small mirror, it contains that little girl’s reflection, but it's almost like she's trapped in a small circle. But here Cassatt is saying that society will contain you, but that it's up to us to see yourself and see how capable we are to escape those parameters. So, seeing this painting, to me, is really beautiful - how she tried to portray this woman teaching this young child how to see herself.

NARRATOR:
As well as the mirror, the sunflower worn by the woman is especially prominent. It may have pointed to women’s struggle to gain the right to vote.

NIKKI GEORGOPULOS:
What I came to uncover was that when Cassatt painted the painting, which is in about 1905, the sunflower had become the primary symbol for the American Suffrage Movement. She had a very clever way of cloaking her more radical beliefs in this subject matter that was seen as acceptable for her as a woman artist.

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