Comparing Degas And Cassatt's After The Bath, Daughter,

I really wanted to do a comparison of Degas, and Cassatt, like Judith Beheading Holofernes in which both Gentileschi and Caravaggio, I felt since Degas and Cassatt had such a close relationship that was a possibility, but my research turned up nothing. I chose to compare Degas’s After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, and Cassatt’s Young Mother, Daughter, and Son, since both pieces were created using pastels. Both artist have a wide range of styles in their work, I will focus not on how they measure up as individual artist but strictly compare these two pieces of work. Degas uses a very limited pallet in his piece, except for some blue, the sea is almost monochromatic, with a dramatic use of mark making. Degas’s use of line portrays a wide variety of textures and surfaces, with a dominance of rough texture marks. Cassatt use a more diverse pallet, she also employs a dynamic color scheme. Cassatt mixes a bit of blue in almost every portion of her work. Cassatt use of line is more timid than Degas’s, she uses softer, blended dominance of line work. …show more content…
Degas and Cassatt have used white marks that pop out in strange ways, there seems to be more of a highlight on the woman bathings hip than the existing light and shadow calls for, in Cassatt’s piece it appears as though the piece was censored or she had afterthoughts, there are two big blotches of white that stick out, one in the baby’s crotch an the other just above the mother’s left wrist. One other item of descrepincy is the young girl in Cassatt work, either has a very long arm, she is uncomfortable in which she is leaning back with her arm fully extended to her knee, or Cassatt just wanted that hand in the image, Degas has a strange hand thing going on also, the bathers right arm, that is engaged in the drying, the hand appears to be more the size child’s