The Painting

The Boating Party was painted between the years of 1893-1894. It is an oil on canvas painting in the Chester Dale Collection. It's dimensions are 35 7/16 x 46 1/8 inches, or 90 x 117.3 cm. The artist, Mary Cassatt, painted this piece while on the south coast of France. It was the center-piece of her first solo show in the United States, and was a very unusual piece for her artistic style because of its coloring, complex composition, and subject matter. Cassat usually just painted women and children, and so adding a man to that mix was an attempt at new compositional effects.