Children in a Garden 

Mary Cassatt made this painting, “Children in a Garden,” with oil on canvas, using methods that were new to the time. She’s working with the relatively recent innovation of paint in tubes, which allowed for the creation of Impressionist works, en plein air. Cassatt builds up texture with her brush, creating a dappled effect that brings out the vitality of the garden scene. In doing so, she has applied the paint in such a way as to capture a fleeting moment in time. The work also implies a class dimension. We see both a mother and child, and also a nanny figure attending to the infant in the carriage. It’s possible that the mother is also occupied with needlework. This signals the means of production in which cloth and clothing are created and commodified, with specific gender roles assigned to the domestic sphere. In the end, Cassatt makes us aware of the labor involved in the making of her painting, which gives voice to other forms of labor. This expands the boundaries of what we typically expect from the world of fine art.