Mary Cassatt: modern artist, modern woman

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 1998 by Kevin Sharp, Jane Clarke

As Cassatt assumed the role of caregiver to her aging parents, the artist's production dwindled in terms of sheer numbers, but certainly not in quality. Now a mature artist at the height of her ability and artistic vision, Cassatt created some of her most memorable works in the 1880s, including the "Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son Robert Kelso Cassatt," the artist's brother and his son, and "Children of the Shore," a relatively early exploration of children as subject matter. The 1880s marked the end of impressionism, at least as a viable exhibition opportunity. In 1886, after the eighth and final show, the always contentious group became even less cohesive-geographically as well as philosophically-and unwilling to collaborate.

Cassatt found an interesting and viable alternative to the Impressionist shows in the burgeoning peintres-graveurs (painters-printmakers) movement. Beginning in 1889, this group began to organize exhibitions at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Pards, which, coincidentally, was the primary dealer of the Impressionists. Although already an innovative and original printmaker from as early as 1879, Cassatt's involvement with the peintres-graveurs, coupled with an 1890 visit to a large and highly influential Japanese print exhibition in Pads, spurred the artist to focus more intently on making her own color prints later in 1890. Her suite of 10 delicately colored drypoints and aquatints represents a landmark in the history of printmaking. Loosely based on Japanese works she had seen in Paris, the album was so technically sophisticated and deceptively complex that Cassatt had the printer who assisted her place his signature alongside her own.

It may well have been the success of these color prints that persuaded Bertha Honore Palmer--the Chicago socialite, collector, and chair of the Columbian Exposition's Board of Lady Managers--to give Cassatt the commission for the Women's Building mural at the 1893 Fair. Palmer acquired a set of Cassatt's prints in early 1892, and only months later, Cassatt was laboring in relative isolation to bring the 58-foot work to completion. Although "Modem Woman" was lost after the close of the fair (in all likelihood destroyed), it served as the basis for many of Cassatt's most impressive and important works of the 1890s. "Child Picking a Fruit," "Girl with a Banjo," and a number of other works derive from her execution of the mural.

By the 1890s, Cassatt was an established and sought-after artist not only in Europe, but increasingly in the U.S. as well. More often than not, this expanding audience of private collectors, museum officials, and exhibition visitors first were introduced to her work via her images of maternity. Known even during her lifetime as a "painter of mothers and children," Cassatt approached the theme with the same unsentimental clarity she used to address all her subjects. Insightful and tender, such paintings as "The Child's Bath," "Breakfast in Bed," and "Young Mother" capture the directness and spontaneous tactility of children with a unique sense of immediacy. The subject was a frequent theme of Cassatt until her death in 1925.