1844–1926
Twenty paintings and prints
Mary Cassatt, an American painter who worked in France, exhibited with the Impressionists and made domestic life her subject. She painted women at the theatre, children at play, people arranging their hair or sealing letters, showing her subjects absorbed in what they were doing rather than holding a formal pose. The twenty works below include oil paintings, a pastel, and colour prints. In the colour prints, made using drypoint, softground etching and aquatint, a few outlines and areas of flat colour are enough to establish a room or a figure.
An editorial selection, not a complete catalogue of Cassatt's work.
A girl has sprawled in a blue armchair, legs stretched across the seat, while a small dog rests on another chair. Cassatt gives as much space to the furniture as to the child, and the scale of the large chairs makes the unstudied posture all the more apparent.
Inventory: 1983.1.18
A loge is a theatre box. Two women sit in the box, dressed in bright fabric and flowers. An open fan partly covers one woman's face; the other holds flowers in her lap. The stage is not shown.
Inventory: 1963.10.96
The woman looks straight out, while a mirror behind her reflects her head and chair from another angle. An open fan lies across her lap.
Inventory: 1963.10.95
A woman in an elaborate hat, gloves and pink dress holds a teacup partway to her lips. The cup and saucer divide the gesture between two hands.
Inventory: 22.16.17
A girl sits with her attention on the dog in her lap. Through the window behind her, roofs and greenery recede into the distance.
Inventory: 2014.79.9
Cassatt places the children in the foreground, leaving the sea as a narrow band behind them. The digging is shown in detail: awkward grips, bent arms, small bodies concentrated on the task.
Inventory: 1970.17.19
Against a plain background, a child in simple clothing stands with hands joined, wearing a straw hat with an uneven brim. The face is unsmiling, the cheeks warm-coloured.
Inventory: 1983.1.17
One arm reaches back, the other gathers the hair forward. The practical task creates the pose, a set of angles against a dense red pattern.
Cassatt would return to the problem in her bathing and dressing scenes: how to show ordinary coordinated movement clearly.
Inventory: 1963.10.97
The child reaches up to touch the adult's cheek; the adult supports the child from below. The faces are worked in detail, with broader pastel strokes left visible in the clothing. The paper, originally blue-grey, has faded to tan.
Inventory: 1922.421
Much of the paper is left bare. A few lines and touches of colour establish two women at tea, one with a raised cup. The inking in this impression is light; others can be much darker.
Inventory: 1943.3.2744
Two women share a bench. One looks away; the other attends to the baby. The compartment is tight, the figures compressed between a strip of window and the bulk of skirts filling the foreground.
Inventory: 1963.10.250
The child throws an arm around the woman's neck and presses toward her face. The embrace is outlined as a single continuous shape, the patterned dress distinguishing one body from the other.
Inventory: 1946.21.87
A coiffure is a hairstyle, or the act of arranging one. The woman is seen from behind; a mirror shows her face, bent shoulders and raised arms. With little shading, the line of her back carries the figure against the striped upholstery and patterned wallpaper.
Inventory: 1963.10.257
A dressmaker kneels to adjust the hem of a customer's striped gown. The mirror reflects the standing customer but not the kneeling dressmaker.
Inventory: 1950.1.42
A woman seals an envelope, bringing it to her mouth. The pale rectangle of the letter stands out against the patterned dress and wallpaper.
Inventory: 1963.10.251
A woman leans toward a washstand, seen from behind with a mirror providing a second view. Her back is outlined with almost no shading; the stripes of her skirt bend around her hips and define the form.
Inventory: 1963.10.253
The rower's dark back occupies much of the foreground; the mother and child sit facing him. The boat's curved edge encloses all three, with water rising high behind them. Broad areas of flat colour make the unequal division of the canvas immediately plain.
Inventory: 1963.10.94
Viewed from above, a woman holds a child on her lap and washes one of the child's feet in a basin. Both heads are bent to the task. The round basin and interlocked limbs hold the composition together amid the stripes and patterns surrounding them.
Inventory: 1910.2
The adult turns toward the child, who looks elsewhere. White pillows and close framing crop out most of the room.
A child looks into a hand mirror while a larger mirror behind reflects the pair. The round centre of the sunflower echoes the shape of the small glass.
Inventory: 1963.10.98
Open these twenty works alongside books and events from their period. The lifespan view includes Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. These comparisons provide historical context, not claims of direct influence.
The works reproduced here are held in different collections. Cassatt's colour prints exist in multiple impressions that can vary in inking and overall tone. The print entries describe the particular impressions illustrated.
Adelyn Dohme Breeskin · National Gallery of Art, 1970 Free museum PDF
An exhibition catalogue with entries and reproductions covering Cassatt's paintings, pastels and prints.
Jennifer A. Thompson and Laurel Garber · 2024 Publisher page; purchase or library
An exhibition catalogue examining Cassatt's working methods and the depiction of labour in her paintings. Includes technical research and correspondence relevant to The Fitting and the bathing scenes.
Art, literature & history