The infant is Cassatt's nephew Joseph Gardner Cassatt III by her brother Gard and sister-in-law Eugenie Carter (Jennie). Cassatt's biographer Nancy M. Mathews dates the print as executed in 1888.[lower-alpha 1] Cassatt painted several portraits of Jennie, but only one quick drypoint sketch of Gard exists, probably executed at the same time as this print of Jennie and the baby.[3] There are at least two other portraits of the young Gardner, of which one is the pastel Gardner and Ellen Mary Cassatt in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[4]
Cassatt came into conflict with her sister-in-law over women's suffrage. Nancy Mathews estimates Cassatt as unquestionably feminist from an early age, but described her feminism as a private, nuanced position that would not allow her to organise exhibitions in pursuit of the feminist cause. Although she did not join any groups advocating women's suffrage she did nevertheless support it, and allowed her friend Louisine Havemeyer, a committed and active feminist, to organise a 1915 exhibition of hers and Edgar Degas's work, together with a selection of Old Masters, at an exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery, New York, in support of the cause. However Eugenie was anti-suffrage, a position that Cassatt could not understand, and Eugenie and family, along with Philadelphia society in general, boycotted the show. Cassatt responded by selling off her work that would otherwise have gone to her heirs.[5][6] This example of the Gardner print was, however, already in the collection of Samuel Putnam Avery, the American connoisseur and art dealer, a personal friend of Cassatt's and one of her most active collectors who went on to donate his entire collection of 17,775 etchings and lithographs to the New York Public Library in 1900.
Cassatt considered herself a painter and not a draftsman, but she was an accomplished printmaker. The medium did not come naturally to her, but she was inevitably caught up in what came to be known as the Etching Revival championed by her Impressionist friends. Her mentor Edgar Degas, whose pastels so inspired her, was working with artists such as Henri Guérard (husband of Eva Gonzalès, another woman painter in the Impressionist circle) to develop more "painterly" effects in printmaking. During the fall and winter of 1879–80 Cassatt worked by day at Degas' studio, which was equipped with a small etching press, acquiring her technique, while her evenings were spent on drawings to be transferred to the etching plate next day. These drawing were of domestic scenes as well as of the theatre scenes associated with her.[7][8]
By 1885 Cassatt had begun to work exclusively in drypoint, a spare and restrained technique worked directly on the plate with the aid of a specially hardened drypoint needle, concentrating on line rather than the "brush" technique she had formerly sought.[9] Later still, inspired by Japanese prints that had been exhibited in Paris, she turned her attention back to the aquatint process, a print process that emulates the watercolorist's wash, exhibiting in 1891 a series of ten highly original colored drypoint and aquatint prints, including Woman Bathing and In the Omnibus. Adelyn D. Breeskin, Cassatt's most noted historian and the author of two catalogue raisonnés of her work, notes that these colored prints, "now stand as her most original contribution... adding a new chapter to the history of graphic arts...technically, as color prints, they have never been surpassed".[10] In all Cassatt executed just 22 color prints. An example of Woman Bathing fetched $218,500 at a Christie's sale in October 2010.[11]
The 1888 Gardner print is generally regarded as the earliest dated example of the mother and child images that grew into Cassatt's greatest body of work, approaching a third of her entire opus. There had been earlier examples of the theme, notably Mother About To Wash Her Sleepy Child (probably the very earliest example) that she showed at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition of 1880, but it was this print that ushered in what was to become her signature theme.[3]
↑ Mathews and Shapiro (1998) note n.25 p. 54 that the print is inscribed "Jan/88"
↑ Jenny and her Sleepy Child, in the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, is known not be the same pair in Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother, as Cassatt did not revisit her sister-in-law until 1891, by which time young Gardner was already five years old and too old to be the toddler portrayed here.[12]
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.
Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used historically to print in colour, both by printing with multiple plates in different colours, and by making monochrome prints that were then hand-coloured with watercolour.
Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer was an art collector, feminist, and philanthropist. In addition to being a patron of impressionist art, she was one of the more prominent contributors to the suffrage movement in the United States. The impressionist painter Edgar Degas and feminist Alice Paul were among the renowned recipients of the benefactor's support.
Marie Bracquemond was a French Impressionist artist, who was described retrospectively by Henri Focillon in 1928 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Her frequent omission from books on artists is sometimes attributed to the efforts of her husband, Félix Bracquemond. Félix Bracquemond was also an artist with a notable "disapproval of Impressionism" – the movement at which his wife Marie excelled. Indeed, Pierre Bracquemond, their son, stated that his father was jealous of Marie's work, belittled her ambition, and refused to show her paintings to visitors.
The Child's Bath is an 1893 oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The painting continues her interest in depicting bathing and motherhood, but it is distinct in its angle of vision. Both the subject matter and the overhead perspective were inspired by Japanese Woodcut prints and Edgar Degas.
The Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building is an exhibit building located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, in the U.S. state of Vermont. It was built as a memorial to the museum's founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, and her husband, James Watson Webb II. It is home to the museum's European Paintings Collection. The collection is shown in six period rooms relocated from Electra and J. Watson Webb's 1930s New York City apartment at 740 Park Avenue.
Nancy Mowll Mathews is a Czech-American art historian, curator and author. She was the Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of 19th and 20th Century Art at the Williams College Museum of Art from 1988 to 2010. She is currently an independent scholar, curator, professor and host of the television show Art World with Nancy Mathews.
Young Woman in Blue is a drawing by French artist Edgar Degas, created in 1884. It is currently in the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair is an 1878 oil painting by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Edgar Degas made some changes in the painting.
Lilacs in a Window is a painting by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge is an 1879 painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired the painting in 1978 from the bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright. The style in which it was painted and the depiction of shifting light and color was influenced by Impressionism. This painting shows a view of the modern woman and is similar in style to Degas.
The Boating Party is an 1893 oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. It has been in the collection of the National Gallery of Art since 1963.
Blues is a 2007 print by Gee's Bend quilter Loretta Pettway Bennett located on the Eskenazi Health campus, near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and is part of the Eskenazi Health Art Collection.
The Cup of Tea is a painting by Mary Cassatt which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.It was painted in Paris around 1880 to 1881. Cassat used her sister, Lydia as the model.
Woman in a Tub is one of a suite of pastels on paper created by the French painter Edgar Degas in the 1880s and is in the collection of the Hill-Stead Museum in Connecticut. The suite of pastels all featured nude women "bathing, washing, drying, wiping themselves, combing their hair or having it combed" and were created in readiness for the sixth and final Impressionist Exhibition of 1886.
Honorine CésarineTian better known by her pseudonym Nori Malo-Renault, was a French etcher, color printmaker. She was born in Marseille France on January 20, 1871 and died at Pau France on January 29, 1953.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
