A Closer Look at Mary Cassatt's The Boating Party – some Design Elements and Principles

A digital image of her painting was traced in Photoshop for this project in an Art Appreciation class.

Parallel lines predominate in this painting. There are the lines of the seats in the boat, the shoreline and the horizon line beyond the low hills of green. Repetitions of parallel horizontal lines in the water that let us know that the water is not still. The line of the man's arm joins the lines of the oar forming an angle that points to the baby. The curved white lines of the gunwale of the boat unite the three people in the boat. The curved lines of the sail and the rigging point to the woman.  The man's trouser forms another line with the yellow seat. The woman’s dress has a crisscrossing pattern of three parallel red lines and the baby’s dress a pattern of red stripes.

Cool colors predominate with the dark blue of the man's clothing, the blue of the water, and the yellow–green of the inside of the boat. The sail, mother’s hat, shirt, and baby’s hat are a similar unsaturated, pastel like light green. The low hills are a more saturated green. It’s a very limited palette. The only warm colors are localized – the muted red pattern in her dress, the baby’s dress, and the flesh tones. There are some small red tiled roofs in the background. It is a sunny day and there is almost no reduction in value or saturation to the background.

The horizon line is extremely high in the painting. The position of the artist drawing the image or a camera taking such a photograph would have to be immediately behind the man and higher than his head because he occupies such a large space and his head is lower than the shore line. Taking an actual measurement from the man’s contact with the seat to his head is almost twice that of the woman. Although she is farther away from the camera or artist, the woman's head (not the hat) is at the shoreline while the man’s head is below the shoreline. The bow of the boat is not elevated out of the water enough to cause this discrepancy. Think when you go to the movies it's the person in the row in front of you who is blocking the screen and not a smaller person two rows in front of you. The woman is being drawn from a lower angle to obtain this effect.

The picture is highly asymmetrical with the man occupying a large portion of the foreground on the right. Balance is achieved by placing the sail on the far left. By not seeing the entire sail, we might wonder how far to the left it continues. The woman and her daughter are to the left of the man. There is a complex line of sight in the center of the painting. We only see a small portion of the man’s left eye and we might infer that he is looking at the baby. Societal proprieties and class structure of the Belle Époque would not have the boatman and this fashionably dressed mother looking at each other. For the mother to have hired the boatman was pushing the limits. The mother's shoulder line is oblique with her left shoulder as far as possible away from the man. The mother is looking below the man's eyes. The baby is looking at him. Trying to interpret the complex body language takes our attention to the center of the painting.  Also using the reddish colors for the pattern in the dress and the child's clothing tends to offset the cool colors on the right side.

The color of the back of the man's jacket and seat of his pants shows minimal variation in color. Most of his backside is flat like a drawing in a comic book. There are variations in the color of his waistband with several parallel lines. These repeated lines and color value variations of the waistband give a sense of texture to the fabric. The dark oblique line near the upper edge of the waistband reveals that there is a fold in the material. The repeating red lines in the dress give depth and form to the dress. The red line pattern is in the shape of an arch in the skirt to show that the fabric is draping over her thighs. The three lined pattern runs obliquely from the knees to the bottom of the skirt to show that the fabric is draped over her legs. The variations used in painting the dress pattern give the appearance of volume to the dress. 

The curved lines of the sail show the force of the wind billowing the sail.  In addition to the parallel broken lines in the water, variations in color value of the water let us know that the water is not flat or still. The man is leaning forward and bracing his foot against the seat. He is ready to make another stroke with the oar.


There is a lot going on in this painting and we only have discussed three elements of design – line, color, and motion, and two design principles – balance and scale.

Effect of Color to Balance Asymmetry

Mary Cassatt used a small amount of red color in the baby’s dress and in the pattern of the woman’s dress to contribute to achieving balance in the painting The Boating Party. 

If she had painted their clothing a similar color to the man’s clothes, our attention would tend to stay on the right side of the painting instead of on the baby. The red color adds, another principle of design to this work – VARIETY.



Effect of Shape to Balance Asymmetry

A large shape has a big effect to achieve balance. In The Boating Party the sail on the left is what is having the greatest effect on balancing the painting.

Here is how the painting would appear without the sail. The oar going off frame does provide some balance, but not as much as the sail and rigging pointing at he woman.