Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Pamela A. Ivinski

A number of counterproofs exist from the artist's later works, among them Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Child (Profile Left) (No. 3) (Pl. XIV), a reverse impression of a pastel dating to about 1908. (26) Cassatt remains one of the most sensitive interpreters of the breastfeeding theme in Western art, whose works manifest a penetrating understanding of the mother-child bond as well as a mastery of decorative principles that earn her works a place among the greatest examples of turn-of-the-century modernism.

These illustrations represent only a fraction of the works in the exhibition and catalogue Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt. As popular as they may be, Cassatt's works on paper are rarely placed on public display. The chance to see forty-eight of her remarkable images, and to consider this little-known aspect of her career, is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity.

I am grateful for the assistance of Jay Cantor, Warren Adelson, and Mare Rosen in the preparation of this article.

Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt is on view from November 1 to January 14, 2005, at Adelson Galleries in New York City.

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(1) Entitled Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt, the exhibition was organized by Adelson Galleries and Marc Rosen Fine Art and is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title published by Adelson Galleries.

(2) Harriet K. Stratis, a paper conservator in the department of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, examined the pastel The Banjo Lesson (Pl. I) under magnification and noted that pigment had been selectively reapplied to areas that had been weakened during the counterproof process. In her view, the pastel additions were so skillful that Cassatt must have done them herself or provided her pastel sticks to the person who did them. As Stratis suggests, no conclusions on the issue of retouching can be made until the majority of original pastels and the counterproofs made from them are located, examined, and compared. For more about this issue, see Stratis, "Innovation and Tradition in Mary Cassatt's Pastels: A Study of Her Methods and Materials," in Judith A. Barter et al., Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman (Art Institute of Chicago in association with Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1998), pp. 221-222. In this article, I have cited pastels from which the Mary Cassatt Catalogue Raisonne Committee believes the counterproofs were made. However, those pastels may not yet have been examined by the Cassatt Committee, and decisions regarding their inclusion in the forthcoming revised catalogue raisonne may not yet have been made.

(3) On this aspect of Merian's work, see Charlotte Jacob-Hanson, "Maria Sibylla Merian, artist-naturalist," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 158 (August 2000), p. 174.

(4) For useful information on the history of French printmaking as it pertains to the achievements of turn-of-the-century graphic artists, see Phillip Dennis Cate, "Prints Abound: Paris in the 1890s," in Prints Abound: Paris in the 1890s: From the Collections of Virginia and Ira Jackson and the National Gallery of Art (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000), pp. 12-47; John W. Ittmann, Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1998); and Lindsay Leard, "The Societe des Peintres-Graveurs: Printmaking 1889-1897" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1992).