CHIU 1

Joshua Chiu

ARTH 104: Honors Survey of Art

May 5, 2017

Short Visual Analysis Paper: Child Picking a Fruit by Mary Cassatt

The topic of this essay is an overview of Child Picking a Fruit by Mary Cassatt, which is

also known as Baby Reaching for an Apple. This painting was exhibited in the Virginia Museum

of Fine Arts (VMFA), and was painted in 1893 using oil on canvas, with a size of 100 cm by 65

cm, or about three feet tall and two feet wide. 1 Child Picking a Fruit is an impressionist

painting, reflecting Cassatt’s education and mentorship in Paris after settling there in 1874.2

Therefore, its style reflects the changing world of art, especially the artistic development in

France in the last quarter of the 19th century. The content carries a complex message, and it

contrasts interestingly with other of Mary Cassatt’s paintings, such as the Modern Woman mural

that she is probably better known for3. Overall, while this painting might be described as

‘soothing’, it in fact was painted during a time of rapid social change, especially concerning

women and their roles and statuses in society.

1
“Child Picking a Fruit (Enfant cueillant un fruit),” VMFA, accessed May 1, 2017,
https://vmfa.museum/collections/art/child-picking-a-fruit-enfant-cueillant-un-fruit_75-
18/.
2
“Degas/Cassatt,” National Gallery of Art, accessed May 1, 2017,
https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/degas-cassatt.html.
3
Norma Broude, “Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?,”
Woman’s Art Journal 21, no. 2 (2000): 36-43.
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After viewing Child Picking a Fruit, I felt it had a strong contrast with the baroque and

classicist pieces that preceded it. The pastel-like colors of Child Picking a Fruit immediately

convey a sense of warmth. To me, this is as much a visual refuge as painting a gentle garden

scene, and is a more intimate version of the message I got from Angelica Kauffman’s Cornelia,

mother of the Gracchi that we covered in class. Both paintings hint at the idea that it is children

that should be nourished and treasured. The natural and intimate scene acts as a visual respite

from the bustling and ever-changing society, fulfilling the same role today as it did a hundred

years ago. Stylistically, I did not think of this being an impressionist painting, since we had not

covered that topic in class yet, nor did I think hard about the meaning of the painting in the

context of Mary Cassatt’s career or the social changes in that era.

In describing the painting, the most apparent aspect is the color division between the

center’s peach pink, and the emerald green of the surrounding. The ground is not detailed, while

the branches, leaves and apples are more detailed. The most distinct apples are surrounded by

less detailed ones, which gradually blend away into the surrounding leaves, with the exact

division between them relatively unclear. The focus of the painting is about three fourths of the

way up the height of the painting, on the area where the mother and her child’s eyes gaze at both

of their hands and the apple that floats in the space in between. Finally, the proportions of the

painting are pleasing because they approximate the golden ratio of approximately 1.6.

Mary Cassatt was an American – she was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and she

studied in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but she later moved to

settle for good in Paris4. After moving to Paris, she met the renowned painter Edgar Degas in

4
“Young Women Picking Fruit,” Carnegie Museum of Art, accessed May 2, 2017,
http://collection.cmoa.org/CollectionDetail.aspx?item=1004771.
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1874 at a Salon, who extended an invitation to her to exhibit with the Impressionists, which she

continued to do until 18865. In particular, both of them took an interest in the popular subject of

women picking fruit6. Additionally, they shared similarities in education, upbringing and broader

preferences in subject matter, such as a proclivity towards depicting human figures in modern

life while avoiding landscape paintings7. Child Picking a Fruit checks all of these boxes, in that

it is a painting of women engaged in fruit picking with an indistinct landscape, albeit in a

situation where the woman is helping her child pick fruit, and where the canopy is more detailed.

The subject matter of fruit picking appears in a contemporaneous painting by Pierre Puvis

de Chavannes on the back wall of the great lecture hall in the Sorbonne, a notable French

university8. This subject matter also appears in Inter Artes et Naturam (Between Art and Nature),

part of which closely mirrors Child Picking a Fruit9. This painting was created in the early

1890s, and also consists of oil on canvas, although it depicts a more panoramic scene rather than

just a mother-child pair10. Although the scene depicted in Child Picking a Fruit is almost

identical to the mother-child pair in the center of Inter Artes et Naturam, Cassatt and Puvis did

not necessarily borrow directly from one another, they certainly did share a common

understanding of certain cultural elements, such as fruit grove being a metaphor for an

5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
“Degas/Cassatt.”
8
Sally Webster, Eve’s Daughter/Modern Woman (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2004), 107-110.
9
Ibid.
10
“Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature),” The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
accessed May 2, 2017, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437346.
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intellectual haven, or a mother and child picking fruit together representing the transmission of

knowledge between generations11.

While Cassatt exhibited extensively in Paris, she is also very well known for her work on

the Modern Woman mural inside the Woman’s Building at the 1893 Chicago Columbian

Exposition12. This mural celebrated the activities of women in a series of scenes set outdoors,

which from left to right are titled Young Girls Pursuing Fame, Young Women Plucking the Fruits

of Knowledge or Science, and Art, Music, Dancing. Child Picking a Fruit is actually one painting

of a set of three works (two paintings and a print) that were made right around when the mural

was made13. Therefore, the content of the mural and those in these three works, which all include

depictions of infants, are all somewhat related. In fact, the content of the print, Gathering Fruit,

is very closely intertwined with that of Child Picking a Fruit. In Gathering Fruit, a third woman

on a ladder hands a fruit to an infant carried by his or her mother14.

Overall, the choice of subject matter in her various works unveiled in 1893 at the World

Expo reflect a wish to convey a certain message to viewers. Her Modern Woman mural is more

assertive in showcasing the ability of the modern woman to attain knowledge, artistic ability and

fame15. Conversely, a view of Gathering Fruit or Child Picking a Fruit might get the impression

that Cassatt wished to celebrate traditional feminine attributes, such as childrearing. However,

11
Webster, 107-110
12
Webster, 122-133
13
Ibid.
14
“Gathering Fruit,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed May 2, 2017,
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/359866.
15
Broude, 36-43.
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both Gathering Fruit and Child Rearing could also be interpreted to contain the same subversive

message as the center panel of Modern Woman, which was Young Women Plucking the Fruits of

Knowledge or Science. In all cases the fruit tree draws a reference to the biblical Tree of

Knowledge of Good and Evil, which conveys Cassatt’s celebrating of female agency in their

own empowerment by ‘plucking the forbidden fruit’16. However, the painting and print are

admittedly less boisterous and more naturalistic, thereby encapsulating this message in a less

openly radical form17.

These innovations occurred during a time of change in the status of women, and Cassatt’s

artwork was her way of celebrating and participating in this shift. However, this shift was not

without its detractors, who bemoaned the change in social relations between the genders, such as

in the increased education of women or in their newfound ability to read (which was still

considered ‘unnatural’ by some in that era)18. As an unmarried woman artist in a highly gendered

and still conservative society, occasionally limiting her own expression and acquiescing to the

system at least somewhat probably was a necessary compromise for success in the highly

competitive artistic arena19. Therefore, while the role of woman at that time was still subservient

to men, she occupied a middle rung in society as an woman artist in a field that continued to be

dominated by men and male oriented preferences20.

16
Webster, 122-133
17
Ibid.
18
Broude, 37
19
Broude, 36-37
20
Ibid.
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In summary, several things can be said about Cassatt’s work. Child Picking a Fruit is

visually soothing, and its complicated position in art and social history is not readily apparent to

viewers. The style of work is influenced by contemporaneous French Impressionists, many of

whom Cassatt exhibited with for a decade. The subject matter of women outdoors, and women

and children picking fruit, were depicted by some other French Impressionists, such as Puvis in

Inter Artes et Naturam. Child Picking a Fruit is among the works that form the more naturalistic

and less assertive counterpart to her Modern Woman mural at the 1893 Chicago World Expo. In

her works during 1893, she was pushing the envelope in both the latitude given to women artists,

as well as pushing to expand the cultural and social freedoms that were given to women in her

era. Therefore, her career included both elements of feminism and advocacy in celebrating the

expansion of women’s freedoms, as well as periods of deference when she adopted less assertive

and well-accepted messages in her works.

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Figure 1. Cassatt, Child Picking a Fruit, c. 1893, oil on canvas

Source: “Child Picking a Fruit (Enfant cueillant un fruit),” VMFA, accessed May 1, 2017,
https://vmfa.museum/collections/art/child-picking-a-fruit-enfant-cueillant-un-fruit_75-18/.

Figure 2. Puvis, Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature), c. 1890-1895, oil on canvas
Source: “Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature),” The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
accessed May 2, 2017, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437346.
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Figure 3. Cassatt, Modern Woman, c. 1893, mural

Source: “Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893,” Decorative Panels, accessed May 3, 2017,
http://ian.macky.net/expo1893/panels.html.

Figure 4. Cassatt, Gathering Fruit, c. 1893, Print.

Source: “Gathering Fruit,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed May 2, 2017,
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/359866.
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Bibliography
“Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.”
Decorative Panels. Accessed May 3, 2017. http://ian.macky.net/expo1893/panels.html.

Broude, Norma. “Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?.” Woman’s Art
Journal 21, no. 2 (2000): 36-43.

“Child Picking a Fruit (Enfant cueillant un fruit).” VMFA. Accessed May 1, 2017.
https://vmfa.museum/collections/art/child-picking-a-fruit-enfant-cueillant-un-fruit_75-18/.

“Degas/Cassatt.” National Gallery of Art. Accessed May 1, 2017.

https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/degas-cassatt.html.

Gathering Fruit.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed May 2, 2017.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/359866.

“Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature).” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed May 2,
2017. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437346.

Webster, Sally. Eve’s Daughter/Modern Woman. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

“Young Women Picking Fruit.” Carnegie Museum of Art. Accessed May 2, 2017.
http://collection.cmoa.org/CollectionDetail.aspx?item=1004771.