Children Playing on the Beach by Mary Cassatt

In works such as the 1884 painting Children Playing on the Beach, Mary Cassatt looked at children with an honest eye. Cassatt captured their clumsy and often random motions and gave them a real rather than a cherubic aspect. With legs sprawled out for balance and a shovel gripped awkwardly in a little fist, the child in the foreground of Mary Cassatt's Children Playing on the Beach is intent on the act of filling a bucket, fully unaware of the viewer's gaze.

Children Playing on the Beach by Mary Cassatt (oil on canvas, 38-3/8x29-1/4 inches) hangs in Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art.

Eventually Mary Cassatt turned to other cultures for inspiration. On the next page we'll look at a painting influenced by her interest in Japanese art.

For more on Impressionist paintings, artists, and art history, see:

• Impressionism
• Vincent van Gogh
• Claude Monet