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Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child (Mother’s Kiss)<\/i>1896. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
In a museum, this behavior might be inelegant, but it\u2019s understandable if you want to get up close and personal with Mary Cassatt\u2019s incredibly soft, textured paintings. Mother and Child (Mother’s Kiss)<\/em>A particularly intriguing candidate, the 1896 work on paper shows the plump cheeks of the figures (probably a mother and daughter) gently squeezed together; strands of silky hair tied into bows and chignons; and wisps of pastel streaked across the paper like taffy.<\/p>\nIt is here, in one\u2019s imagination, that Cassatt\u2019s work begins and ends\u2014in a cocoon of domesticity, or what art historian Edgar Richardson once described as \u201can eternal afternoon tea.\u201d Mother and Child (Mother’s Kiss) <\/em>Part of the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), which is exhibiting the latest works by the American Impressionist through September 8, \u201cMary Cassatt at Work\u201d aims to subvert the notion of Cassatt as a painter of pastoral scenes. As exhibition co-curator Laurel Garber said in an interview, it stems from a desire to \u201cbring contemporary issues and conversations to the material.\u201d \u201cThere are so many ways to revisit her scenes that have\u2026ossified into \u2014 I think \u2014 tired interpretations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Mary Cassatt, Little girl in blue armchair<\/i>1877\u201378. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Mary Cassatt at Work is grounded in a contemporary feminist sensibility, namely a sensitivity to the historical undervaluation of so-called \u201cwomen\u2019s work.\u201d We are reminded that domestic labor was essential: when Cassatt painted, she also painted workplaces. More importantly, since women of Cassatt\u2019s socioeconomic status often viewed painting as a hobby, highlighting the professional nature of her practice also adds an important feminist perspective. When Cassatt depicted her home as a workplace, she was working herself\u2014not just engaging in a bourgeois hobby, a more socially sanctioned undertaking. <\/p>\n
Cassatt was, of course, a woman ahead of her time, and her work has been studied through the lens of feminist art history for decades. Today, fourth-wave popular feminism, keen to idolize individuals, might be tempted to hold her up as a poster child for feminism. The exhibition has more modest aims; it largely avoids explicitly labeling Cassatt a feminist. Nonetheless, it reveals aspects of the artist\u2019s life and work that resonate with contemporary ideas about female empowerment, both on an individual and collective level.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Modern Painters, Modern Life<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n\n
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Mary Cassatt, installation view of \u201cMary Cassatt at Work,\u201d Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2024. Photo by Timothy Tiebout. Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Cassatt\u2019s personal highlights were remarkable. Born in Pennsylvania in 1844, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia before moving abroad to continue her art training. In Paris, she befriended Edgar Degas and was eventually invited to exhibit with the Impressionists not once, but four times. She was the only American to do so, and one of very few women. In 1904, Cassatt became the second female artist to receive the French Legion of Honor from the French government. In today\u2019s terms, she broke the glass ceiling. <\/p>\n
Impressionism was the painting of modern life, and Cassatt\u2019s own life was thoroughly modern. Though she often painted infants, the artist herself never married or had children. The exhibition takes pains to underscore her unwavering commitment to her professionalism\u2014from 1878 onward, her family insisted that she be self-sufficient. \u201cI am independent!\u201d Cassatt once wrote, in a quote that now hangs on a gallery wall at the PMA. \u201cI can live on my own, and I love my work.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Utopian Women’s Collaboration<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n\n
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Replica of Mary Cassatt, Modern Women<\/i>1892\u201393. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
One of the most important works of Cassatt’s career, Modern Women <\/em>(1892\u201393) is described by art historian Nicole Georgopulos in the exhibition catalogue as the artist\u2019s \u201cgreat work on the emancipation of women.\u201d Commissioned for the Women\u2019s Building at the 1893 Chicago World\u2019s Fair, the large mural depicts a Garden of Eden where women work together to harvest and spread the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Modern Women <\/em>It survives only as a photograph, but its allegorical vision of female education reveals Cassatt\u2019s interest in collective patterns and networks of knowledge.<\/p>\nThese themes appear on a smaller scale Fruit picking<\/em>a lithograph produced the same year as the World\u2019s Fair. Rendered in a verdant botanical setting, the painting depicts a woman on a ladder handing picked grapes to a child held by another woman. Here, Cassatt recasts the image of Eve and repositions knowledge as a source of female power rather than a source of sin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Women’s work <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n\n
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Mary Cassatt, In the comprehensive version<\/i>1890\u201391. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Mary Cassatt, bath<\/i>1890\u201391. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Mary Cassatt’s world is full of maternal gestures (titles include Mother’s Kiss<\/em>, maternal love<\/em>) \u2014 but in many cases her images were fictional. Cassatt\u2019s \u201cmothers\u201d were often paid models, and she also frequently depicted \u201cpink-collar\u201d workers, such as wet nurses and hired care workers. <\/p>\n\u201cMary Cassatt at Work\u201d suggests that the sentimentality of these images is undercut by Cassatt\u2019s persona, as well as her compositional choices. As a result, they touch upon the reality of motherhood, real or fictional: it\u2019s all work. maternal love<\/em> (1896), Cassatt emphasizes the physicality of caring for a child. The painting\u2019s adorable subject, a rosy-cheeked toddler with strawberry-blond curls, appears to be shoving her thumb into the mouth of her caregiver, who clutches her arm in restraint. \u201cThe question we wrestled with was, \u2018Is that a good title?\u2019 \u201d Garber\u2019s co-curator Jennifer Thompson said of the painting during a tour of the exhibition. \u201cIs there any caressing in the painting?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Mary Cassatt, maternal love<\/i>1896. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
While Cassatt, due to her gender and class, was unable to access many of the spaces her male Impressionist colleagues frequently painted\u2014street scenes, Parisian nightclubs, and the like\u2014Garber points out that Cassatt wasn\u2019t just painting what was accessible. These domestic scenes weren\u2019t just observed, they were actively staged. This comes across in a letter Cassatt wrote to her friend Louise Havemeyer, in which she describes \u201cthe difficulty of posing the model, choosing the color scheme, expressing the emotion, and telling the story!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe chooses to cut scenes in very interesting ways, or [the way] \u201cShe enlarges and brings to life the figures within the frame,\u201d Garber said. \u201cI found that really speaks to the challenge she faced in capturing the intensity and physicality and the impact and tension of these scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n