Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Pamela A. Ivinski

(5) On Cassatt's career as a printmaker, see Nancy Mowll Mathews and Barbara Stern Shapiro, Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints (Harry N. Abrams, New York, in association with Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1989); and Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Work (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1979).

(6) These are my translations. Jules Antoine (1845-1916) described Cassatt's drypoints as "precise and supple" in "Beaux Arts, Galerie Durand Ruel.--Deuxieme exposition des peintres-graveurs," Art et critique, vol. 2 (March 15, 1890), p. 172; while Leon Roger-Miles admired their "distinguished simplicity" in "Beaux-Arts, Le Salon des Peintres-Graveurs," Paris newspaper L'Evenement, March 11, 1890, n.p. For a discussion of Cassatt's contributions to the "Peintres-Graveurs" exhibitions and their critical reception, see Pamela A. Ivinski, "Mary Cassatt, the Maternal Body, and Modern Connoisseurship" (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2003, and microfilm), vol. 1, pp. 256-275.

(7) See Phillip Dennis Cate and Marianne Grivel, From Pissarro to Picasso: Color Etching in France: Works from the Bibliotheque nationale and the Zimmerli Art Museum (Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Flammarion, Paris, 1992) for a valuable history of this medium through 1914. For more information on Cassatt's Set of Ten, see Mathews and Shapiro, Mary Cassatt; Elliot Bostwick Davis, "Mary Cassatt's color prints," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 154 (October 1998), pp. 484-493; and Ivinski, "Mary Cassatt," vol. 1, 284-303.

(8) Montague Marks, "My Note Book: Exhibitions," Art Amateur, vol. 32 (May 1895), p. 158.

(9) On Vollard, see Una E. Johnson, Ambroise Vollard, Editeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977); and Leard, "The Societe des Peintres-Graveurs," pp. 173-190.

(10) Cate, "Prints Abound," p. 23. For more about Clot, see Pat Gilmour, "Cher Monsieur Clot ... Auguste Clot and His Role as a Colour Lithographer," in Lasting Impressions: Lithography as Art, ed. Pat Gilmour (A. C. T. and Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1988), pp. 129-182. The history of color lithography in the 1890s is treated in Phillip Dennis Cate and Sinclair Hitchings, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890-1900 (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1978). Recent research by the Mary Cassatt Catalogue Raisonne Committee suggests that the counterproofs of Cassatt's pastels were probably made over a period of time, possibly between 1905 and 1915, the years during which Cassatt worked most closely with Vollard. The committee has also begun to rethink the dating of Cassatt's oeuvre in general, a situation that is reflected in the dates assigned in this article. However, this redating is not definitive and is subject to change upon the publication of the forthcoming revised catalogue raisonne.

(11) Nancy Mowll Mathews provides important information on Cassatt's relationship with her dealers in Mary Cassatt: A Life (Villard Books, New York, 1994), especially pp. 281-282.