Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Pamela A. Ivinski

After the turn of the century, Cassatt increasingly explored another subject allied to the northern genre tradition, that of the young girl seated alone or cradling an adorable dog. Like Dutch and Flemish painters of the seventeenth century, as well as English artists of the romantic period such as Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) and Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Cassatt excelled at the sympathetic rendering of children, infusing her small female sitters with both girlish charm and quiet dignity. Though her models were more likely to be the children of local servants than the nobles who were frequently the subjects of northern and English romantic paintings, Cassatt often posed her girls on seats reminiscent of thrones. The sitter in the counterproof Margot in a Dark Red Costume Seated on a Round-Backed Chair (Pl. XIII), for instance, is positioned on a gold-toned piece of upholstery that invokes an immense halo while repeating the nimbus shape of the child's plaid hat. A blond model also favored by the artist in this period, seen in the extraordinarily strong counterproof impression, Smiling Sara in a Big Hat Holding Her Dog (No. 1) (Pl. XI), exhibits something of a resemblance to the Infanta Margarita, the central figure in Las Meninas (1655-1656) by Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), which Cassatt appreciated during the many hours she spent studying in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.

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The same girl depicted in Margot in a Dark Red Costume Seated on a Round-Backed Chair reappears, a few years older, in a less finished composition, Margot in a Pale Rose Hat (Pl. XV). In this counterproof, the sketchy nature of the background concentrates attention on the child's pretty face. Cassatt demonstrated great restraint, however, giving her sitter a wistful expression that prevents the image from becoming overly sweet. The same is true for Margot in a Bonnet (Pl. XII), a counterproof after an unrecorded pastel that closely relates to a conventionally finished painting Spring: Margot Standing in a Garden (Fillette dans un jardin) (1902-1903). (24) While the painting represents the same child in half-length, situated in front of a verdant landscape, the counterproof depicts only her head and upper torso, emphasizing her bloom, so to speak, and incarnating the impressionist ideal of seemingly effortless technique. Sketches of this type, when exhibited in 1908 at Vollard's one-person show of Cassatt's art, led the critic Pierre Hepp to enthuse:

Above all, Mary Cassatt should be viewed as one of those rare living
artists who knows how to decipher the changeable visage of childhood.
These forty-some pastels attest to the maternal patience that inclines
their author toward the diaphanous graces of the first years.... What
remains here of an Anglo-Saxon stiffness, outside of that which
characterizes the intervention of a personality, does not encroach upon
the amiable freshness, the joyous freedom, and the solemn and calm
conscience that are imprinted on the works of Mary Cassatt. (25)