Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Pamela A. Ivinski

One such work, Nude Dark-Eyed Little Girl with Mother in Patterned Wrapper (Pl. VIII), a counterproof after another unrecorded pastel, at first glance reminds the viewer of Utamaro's woodblock prints, with its brightly colored kimono and lively drawing style. However, turn-of-the-century viewers were just as likely to associate this type of picture with old master Madonnas, especially those by Raphael (1483-1520), who had come to be admired for the way in which "instead of quenching the natural in the divine, he sought and expressed the divine in the natural," as the art historian Elizabeth Lady Eastlake (nee Rigby; 1809-1893) explained in 1883. (19) Nude Dark-Eyed Little Girl with Mother in Patterned Wrapper owes something to the compositional template and sweet facial types found in Raphael's iconic Madonna paintings. Cassatt's counterproof image is also related to her highly finished pastel portraying the same figures, Woman with Baby (1898-1899). (20) But in contrast to that picture, which is dominated by a high key palette, the colors were somewhat softened and the faces slightly blurred when the counterproof impression was made, resulting in a vaporous effect akin to that found in Raphael's paintings.

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Cassatt's Reine Lefebvre with Blond Baby and Sara Holding a Cat (Pl. IX) also transmutes Renaissance Holy Family precedents in much the same way that her 1893 mural converted the biblical Eve into a figure of progressive womanhood. This counterproof embodies what has been identified as Cassatt's modern Madonna imagery: pictures of lovely and fashionable young women with attractive children who are fully of their own time, yet are placed within compositions that continue to draw upon old master traditions. This particular counterproof attests to the significant role that Vollard played in Cassatt's life in the 1900s, for it includes a counterproof inscription to him.

At the same time, Cassatt could productively subvert old master conventions in the creation of pastels of an intimate domestic beauty, as in the two counterproofs of Baby Charles Looking Over His Mother's Shoulder (No. 2) (Pls. III, IV). Here the mother's face is turned away from the viewer, in defiance of traditional renderings of the Madonna that required the complete legibility of her face. These counterproofs relate to a group of pictures likely completed around 1900, ranging from a rather formal oil painting, Baby Charles Looking Over His Mother's Shoulder (No. 3) (1900-1901) (21) to an austere drypoint, Baby Held before an Oval Mirror. (22) Whereas the painting and drypoint focus on the connection between the figures and their mirror reflections, the Baby Charles counterproofs bring the mother and child to the fore. The muted palette, flowered pattern of the mother's dress with blue accents that rhyme with the child's neck ribbon, and flattened pastel surface combine to produce counterproofs of a delicate, almost otherworldly grace.

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The mother's back is also presented to the spectator in the counterproof Mother Combing Sara's Hair (No. 2) (Pl. X). (23) In this case, the horizontal composition is entirely modern, unthinkable without impressionist innovations in cropping and post-impressionist experiments in color: Nonetheless, the subject matter again draws upon old master tradition, but this time of a northern European type. Flemish and Netherlandish art deeply impressed Cassatt during her student years and provided many of her enduring themes, secular as well as sacred. Around 1900 the artist produced a number of images that recall seventeenth-century genre paintings of women grooming their children, including Mother Combing Sara's Hair (No. 2), a work that also epitomizes Cassatt's skill at capturing the nuances of expression, so clearly legible in the young girl's eyes.