Susan in a Straw Bonnet

Mary Cassatts Susan in a Straw Bonnet from around 1883 is a pastel on paper that depicts a young girl wearing a straw hat in a composition of chromatic brilliance and compositional daring that demonstrates the American Impressionist painters ability to combine the intimate subject matter available to women artists with the formal innovations of the Impressionist movement. The girl identified as Susan, who may be the daughter of friends or a professional model, is rendered with the direct gaze and informal pose that distinguish Cassatts portraits of children from the idealized and sentimental depictions that were common in late 19th-century painting. The straw bonnet, with its wide brim that frames the face in a circle of light and shadow, provides Cassatt with a compositional device that draws attention to the girls expression and creates a pattern of warm and cool tones across the composition. The pastel medium, with its capacity for rapid execution and chromatic intensity, allows Cassatt to capture the fleeting effects of light on the bonnet and the face with a directness and immediacy that oil painting cannot match. The year 1883 places this pastel in the period when Cassatt was most deeply engaged with the Impressionist movement, exhibiting regularly with the group and developing the pastel technique that would become her primary medium in the later 1880s and 1890s.

Cassatts pastels of children are among the most innovative works of American Impressionism, and their influence on the development of pastel as a medium for serious artistic expression extends through the 20th century. Susan in a Straw Bonnet exemplifies the combination of formal innovation and intimate subject matter that made her work significant.

A pastel by Cassatt from around 1883 depicting a young girl in a straw bonnet, combining Impressionist chromatic brilliance with the direct gaze and compositional daring that distinguish her child portraits from sentimental convention.