hatch marks. Degas achieved this leaner quality with pastels,his fa-
vorite medium. Using these dry sticks of powdered pigment, Degas
drew directly on the paper, as one would with a piece of chalk, thus
accounting for the linear basis of his work. Although the applied
pastel is subject to smudging, the colors tend to retain their auton-
omy, so they appear fresh and bright.
The Tub also reveals how Degas’s work, like that of the other Im-
pressionists, continued the modernist exploration of the premises of
painting by acknowledging the artwork’s surface. Although the viewer
clearly perceives the woman as a depiction of a three-dimensional
form in space, the tabletop or shelf on the right of the image appears
so severely tilted that it seems to parallel the picture plane. The two
pitchers on the table complicate this visual conflict between the table’s
flatness and the illusion of the bathing woman’s three-dimensional
volume. The limited foreshortening of the pitchers and their shared
edge, in conjunction with the rest of the image, create a visual perplex-
ity for the viewer.
MARY CASSATTIn the Salon of 1874, Degas admired a paint-
ing by a young American artist,Mary Cassatt(1844–1926), thedaughter of a Philadelphia banker. Degas befriended and influenced
Cassatt, who exhibited regularly with the Impressionists. She had
trained as a painter before moving to Europe to study masterworks in
France and Italy. As a woman, she could not easily frequent the cafés
with her male artist friends, and she had the responsibility of caring
for her aging parents, who had moved to Paris to join her. Because of
these restrictions, Cassatt’s subjects, like Morisot’s (FIG. 31-7), were
principally women and children, whom she presented with a combi-
nation of objectivity and genuine sentiment. Works such as The Bath
(FIG. 31-12) show the tender relationship between a mother and
child. As in Degas’s The Tub,the visual solidity of the mother and child
contrasts with the flattened patterning of the wallpaper and rug. Cas-
satt’s style in this work owed much to the compositional devices of
Degas and of Japanese prints, but the painting’s design has an origi-
nality and strength all its own.
JAMES WHISTLERAnother American expatriate artist in Eu-
rope was James Abbott McNeill Whistler(1834–1903), who
spent time in Paris before settling finally in London. He met many of
the French Impressionists, and his art is a unique combination of
some of their concerns and his own. Whistler shared the Impres-
sionists’ interests in the subject of contemporary life and the sensa-
tions color produces on the eye. To these influences he added his
own desire to create harmonies paralleling those achieved in music.31-12Mary Cassatt,The Bath,ca. 1892. Oil on canvas, 3 3
2 2 . Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Robert A. Walker Fund).
Cassatt’s style owed much to the compositional devices of Degas and
of Japanese prints, but her subjects differed from those of most Impres-
sionists, in part because, as a woman, she could not frequent cafés.31-13James Abbott McNeill Whistler,Nocturne in Black and
Gold (The Falling Rocket), ca. 1875. Oil on panel, 1 11 –^58 1 6 –^12 .
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (gift of Dexter M. Ferry Jr.).
In this painting, Whistler displayed an Impressionist’s interest in
conveying the atmospheric effects of fireworks at night, but he also
emphasized the abstract arrangement of shapes and colors.830 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 19001 ft.
1 in.