Breakfast in Bed

Maker Mary Cassatt (American, 1844 - 1926)

Collections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1897

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensions23 × 29 in. (58.4 × 73.7 cm.) frame: 32 1/4 × 38 1/4 × 4 in. (81.9 × 97.2 × 10.2 cm.)

SignedL.L. MARY CASSATT

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation

Status

Not on view

Label TextMary Cassatt was one of the first American women to achieve international recognition as a painter. Born into a prominent Pennsylvania family, she spent most of her life in France after traveling there to study art in 1866. She became close friends with the French Impressionists, including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Berthe Morisot, and she was the only American to officially join and exhibit with the group. Impressionists used small brushstrokes and unmixed colors to capture a quick, visual impression of a scene.

In the 1880s, Cassatt began depicting the subject that absorbed her for the rest of her career: mothers and their children. She often dealt with the tension between a mother's focused attention on her child and the child's desire to explore the world. In Breakfast in Bed, the mother gazes at the child wrapped in her arms while the child looks out into the room. By focusing closely on the figures, Cassatt draws the viewer into the intimate scene.

Object number83.8.6