Short Sample Essays

Use the picture below as a reference for studying the two Short Sample Essays below. Use these samples and the Exploded Essay to study for the essay you will write for your Module Exam.

Girl Arranging Her Hair. Mary Cassatt. 1886.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Sample 1:

"Pictures" Question: Identify the formal element of repetition in this work. How does it work to create meaning or experience? What do you think this meaning or experience could be?

Repetition is an important formal element in an art work because repeating or alternating patterns make it easy to see whatever it is that the artist is trying to show. Three basic terms used to describe how basic elements are repeated or alternated are, rhythm, harmony, and variation. Mary Cassatt uses repetition very effectively in this painting in order to make the viewer concentrate on the moment being shown. Forcing attention on the girl caught in the act of arranging her hair allows the person looking at the painting to become that girl and to imagine what she is thinking at such a personal moment. In "Girl Arranging Her Hair", repetition really makes the girl and her hair seem important. For example, the color white is repeated several times in the painting. First of all, the girl’s nightgown is white. This white color is also used in the top of the dresser behind the girl and also in the pitcher and bowl that is standing on the dresser. Also, although the girl’s skin is not the same pure white as the other objects, it is very pale, which makes it seem like a repeating color. All these repeating white tones flow together in a smooth rhythm that gives the painting harmony. Another repeated color in this painting is brown, different tones of which are used a lot in the back round. These smaller bits of brown are the same tones as her hair, so the viewer’s eyes are naturally drawn to the biggest amount of this brown color—the girl’s hair. Thus her hair really stands out, especially next to the all the white in her skin and nightgown. The repetition of whites and browns has focused attention on a very personal moment of grooming, setting the stage for an adventure in imagination

The girl is sitting in her nightgown getting ready for the day. She is playing with her hair, she could be braiding it but it’s not really clear in the painting. She has a dreamy look on her face. Maybe she is dreaming of meeting the man she loves. In her day dream her hair style is important to her because she wants to look beautiful for her lover, who is a dark handsome poet. Her parents, hoping to marry her off to the rich but boring lawyer who has been courting her, have forbidden her to see the poet but, her sister has been carrying secret notes for the lovers and they have arranged to meet later in the day. Lost in her romantic day dream the girl has stopped fixing her hair and just sits there holding the braid she is supposed to be twisting up on top of her head in a style proper for a young lady of the time period. Mary Cassatt captured this moment in her painting by using repetition. By using many shades of white and brown, she has forced our attention to a certain moment of grooming. She gives us a way to enter a very private moment and make it our own. Just like the title says, this is a portrait of a girl in the middle of arranging her hair, but it is also the key to the secret world of imagination.

Sample 2:

"Pictures" Question: Identify the formal element of repetition in this work. How does it work to create meaning or experience? What do you think this meaning or experience could be?

In "Girl Arranging Her Hair" Cassatt uses repetition of curves and angles to invest the work with the rich sensuality associated with self-adornment. Variations on a theme, repetitive yet not identical curves in the objects around the girl highlight the soft roundness of her face, the focal area of sensuality. The round stopper of the flask to her left imitates the swell of the truncated globe of the flask itself and the squat curve of the white pot beside it. To the right of the girl, wide curves of side and lip give the water basin double circularity. The vertical curve of the pitcher draws attention to the curve of the girl’s profile, emphasizing her face where similar curves are arranged with a natural logic that leads the eye through a harmonious flow from one curve to another. Forehead, nose, lip, and chin create a cascade of right-hand curves that are mimicked by the left-hand curves of hairline and back of head. Lower curves of ear and jaw also echo the top curve of her head—all curves finally joining in a neat circularity. The red blush of the girl’s cheek reinforces her roundness and draws even more attention to her face. Once there, the eye lingers on details such as the pouty line of her parted lips and the languor of her half-closed eyes, features that work in concert with the lush roundness of the myriad curves to create an impression of sensuality appropriate to a girl arranging her hair.

Ironically, repetitive angles also reinforce this sensuality. The dual V angles of the girl’s elbows form the emphatic brackets that enclose her face and braid. Their echo is evident to the left in the angles of chair back and the crease of the nightgown, to the right in the reverse angle formed by the mirror’s edge and right angle of the nightgown sleeve. The elbows create a closed composition, drawing the eye in an endless loop that begins at the left-side shoulder, runs down to the elbow, up the forearm, through the braid held with such unconscious grace, and up though the upper forearm before continuing around the elbow and back across the shoulders to begin again. The repetitive angles give the loop the effortless rhythm of a Möbius strip. Within this flexed-circle frame, the lush curves of the girl’s face glow with a rich sensuality.