Children Playing on the Beach by Mary Cassatt

Let’s take a closer look at Children Playing on the Beach by Mary Cassatt. This one hits close to home for me. I’d love to paint something similar one day featuring my daughters, Elora and Arabella. It was one of Cassatt’s rare coastal paintings. She typically stuck to interior subjects. It was also showcased at the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886.

“Oh, my God! those babies! How those portraits have made my flesh crawl, time and again!—A whole passel of English and French smearers has painted them in such stupid, pretentious poses! . . . For the first time, thanks to Mlle. Cassatt, I have seen effigies of enchanting tots, calm and bourgeois scenes, painted with an utterly charming sort of delicate tenderness.” A critic on Cassatt’s candit and honest approach to painting children. (Source)

Varying Levels of Realism

The first thing that strikes me about the painting is the varying level of realism. The children are conveyed with more care and realism, whilst the surroundings are far more impressionistic and abstract. This certainly makes for a strong focal point.

The challenge of painting this way is making sure it all works together as a whole. Cassatt did well in this regard. The children don’t appear out of place or overly refined. They just appear in focus. If you look closely, you can see Cassatt was still fairly impressionistic in her approach. Notice the scumbles, broken color, outlining, and simplified detail. But it’s much tighter and more refined than the rest of the painting. It mimics the way we see in life—how what we focus on appears clear and realistic, whilst everything else appears as a mere impression.

Let’s zoom in on the rocks and boats in the background. Look how simple and abstract they are up close. But in the context of the painting, they appear somewhat realistic. We can tell it’s a rocky shore and boats in the background. This just goes to show how simple you can be with your brushwork IF you get the right colors in the right spots (of both the subject and its surroundings). The viewer’s eyes can do the rest of the work.

Saturation Contrast

Saturation contrast plays a strong role in the painting. In the image below, notice the child’s rosy cheeks and lips. This, along with the softer brushwork, plays into her youthful nature. You can also see a few bursts of saturated red around her ear and shoulder.

Cassatt made use of what appears to be almost pure ultramarine blue for many of the outlines on the children and their digging tools. See below. Interestingly, the ultramarine blue doesn’t overpower the painting or appear out of place. It simply provides a strong and colorful accent for key edges and outlines.

In the close-up below, you can see both vivid red and blue outlines around her hand holding the bucket. It’s like there’s a subtle play between the warm and cool colors going on in front of us, but you must look closely to spot it.

Brushwork and Technique

For the background, Cassatt was relaxed in her approach. You can see parts of the bare (perhaps stained?) surface through gaps in the paint. This gives a rustic finish. The rocks along the shore and boats appear to have been done wet-on-wet, with a few multicolored strokes to add the illusion of detail.

On the clothing and hat, you can see thick scumbling with white and yellow highlights to suggest the bright sunlight.

The highlight on the child’s lip is sharper and more intricate.

For the children, Cassatt used her strokes to reiterate the contours and forms. See the child’s arm and legs below.

The close-up of the two hands below is quite revealing. It reminds me a bit of Steve Huston’s work, with the zig-zagging strokes that explore and define the subject. With her hand holding the digger, notice how Cassatt left the edges between her fingers soft, whereas the other hand is much more defined. This makes her hand gripping the bucket appear more front-on (with the dark accents being more visible). You can test it for yourself. Clench your fist and look at it from the front and from a side angle. Notice how the edges change.

Value Structure

In terms of value (how light or dark the colors are), most of the painting is compressed around the middle to light-value range, plus a few particularly light and dark areas. There’s a sense of light to the painting, but it doesn’t seem to be the focus as it is in, say, Joaquín Sorolla’s work. The light is somewhat restrained and understated.

The girl’s cheek is interesting here. Notice how it doesn’t stand out in the grayscale like it does in the full-color image. This suggests that saturation contrast is doing most of the work, not value. This tricked my eyes. I assumed her cheeks were much darker than this. Sometimes our eyes mistake saturation contrast for value contrast. Color is not always as it seems!

An unusual aspect of the painting is the lack of cast shadows, apart from a bit of darkening on the sand below the children. It may be that there is so much light bouncing around that it limits the shadows. Or it may have been a design choice, or an oversight. Whatever the case, it doesn’t seem to compromise the painting as a whole.

Strong Sense of Anatomy

The Impressionists often get a bad rap for being sloppy and not that academic. However, many of them had strong academic foundations; they simply chose to paint with more relaxed strokes. This is a good example. Children are not easy to paint, as they are still developing, and their proportions can be deceiving. But Cassett did well with the anatomy and structure. All the key details are in the right spots.

Composition

The composition is tight and focused around the children digging in the sand. It’s interesting how Cassatt decided to crop out one of the child’s feet. It probably goes against composition theory, but it seems to work.

The positioning of the girls is powerful. They are partially overlapped, suggesting a close bond. Perhaps they are siblings? Their near-identical outfits suggest so. Cassatt never revealed the identity of the children. It may be a nostalgic representation of Cassatt and her older sister, Lydia, who died in 1882.

There’s a pleasant balance of quiet and busy space. Cassatt gave our eyes many areas to rest. Most of the detail and contrast is contained around the girls and parts of the background. Everything else is fairly open and quiet. This is a powerful lesson on composition. Don’t try to do too much! Unless that is what you are going for.

Have you noticed the strong diagonal theme? I was initially only going to write about the diagonal line created by the shore, but then I realized that diagonals are present throughout the entire painting. See the image below. This creates an interesting zig-zag motion. Our eyes bounce from Cassatt’s signature, to the children playing, to the right corner of the shore, to the rocks on the left, and through to the two boats. It’s subtle in a way that you don’t notice it at first, but it’s there.

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Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Regards

Dan Scott