Explore the Commentaries of this artwork.
Griselda Pollock declares the painting one of the most radical images of childhood of the time. Germaine Greer calls it Cassatt's first real stunner: "As an icon of the awfulness of being at once controlled by adults and ignored by them, this bold work could hardly be bettered", a view echoed by Ben Pollitt in his description of the painting as capturing the huffing and puffing tiresomeness that a child feels within the social constraints of an adult world.John Bullard likens the chairs to bump cars at an amusement park. The portion Degas worked on was probably the oddly-shaped patch of floor between the chairs, as well as the play of light through the windows. The entire painting shows Degas' influence in the asymmetrical composition, the use of pattern, and the cropping of the image in the manner of the Japanese prints he had introduced Cassatt to. He finds the picture an image of the contented boredom of a comfortable bourgeois life, although the slightly languid and provocative pose of the child is disconcerting.Judith Barter discounts the idea that the jury at the American Pavilion were affronted by the physicality of the girl's pose. A rather similar painting, in terms of the pose, by the Belgian painter Alfred Cluysenaar had been accepted by the Belgian Pavilion. Where they differed was in their treatment, Cluysenaar's being conventional whereas Cassatt's was radical in her handling of the background, and more nuanced in its psychologism. In Clusysenaar's portrait his son holds the viewer in a direct uncomplicated gaze, whereas Cassatt's little girl's gaze is a more elusive sideways glance that asserts her own independence. Cassatt's compelling motivation in her images of children was their care, reflecting the most advanced ideas of the time concerning maternity and the raising of children. The pastel Mother and Child, for example, continues her Degas-like preoccupation with pattern but primarily addresses the strong emotional bond between mother and child.The painting is referenced in Harriett Chessman's influential 1993 essay Mary Cassatt and the Maternal Body. Extending Griselda Pollock's notion of the "spaces of femininity", Chessman suggests that Cassatt used the child's body in her mother and child paintings as a way of encoding female sexuality. Judith Barter observes that in Cassatt's social millieu the only proper expression of a woman's sexuality was her maternity. In a painting such as Breakfast in Bed we are aware that we have interrupted an intimate moment, but we have not done so improperly. Chessman describes Breakfast in Bed as an allegory of the maternal body.
Griselda Pollock Mary Cassatt Breakfast in Bed Germaine Greer Harriett Chessman Alfred Cluysenaar