Mary Cassatt. L'indépendante

Musée d'Orsay

To mark the hundredth anniversary of the artist's death, the musée d'Orsay is organising a major exhibition devoted to Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). This is a highly anticipated event in France: the national museums have never before dedicated a major exhibition to Mary Cassatt, an active member of the Impressionist group and one of its pillars. Her centenary invites us to examine the central place of this artist of the first rank, who managed, through her talent and determination, to forge a unique identity in the history of art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, on both sides of the Atlantic. Mary Cassatt described herself as "American, distinctly and frankly American", but she first grounded her art in the pictorial tradition of the old masters, studied during her travels in Europe, before becoming an unavoidable figure of the Impressionist movement in France, where she lived for no fewer than six decades. "I am independent!" she proclaimed: "I can live alone and I love to work". Adopting a chrono-thematic approach, the exhibition draws a new portrait of the artist, studying her art through the prism of the notion of independence, of which she was greatly proud, and which she made the guiding principle of her whole life. Comprising nearly 80 paintings, pastels and prints, and covering the artist's entire career, "Mary Cassatt, L'indépendante" opens up new perspectives on her work, drawing on unpublished letters and sources not yet exploited to date. Works from European public and private collections, rarely shown, will be presented, as well as paintings and pastels from American collections seldom exhibited outside the United States. A selection of Cassatt's early works and portraits of her relatives shows how the artist's social milieu, her travels and her knowledge of the art of the past shaped her approach and practice. Making it a point of honour to be independent (originally at the request of her wealthy family), she quickly established herself in her own studio and employed paid models there. In a very largely male milieu, and against a backdrop of latent nationalism, she succeeded before long in establishing herself as a professional painter. Her depictions of elegant young women, moving in society, receiving guests at home or amusing themselves at the theatre – conquering the modern world, and their own independence – are among the artist's most remarkable achievements, as dazzling examples attest. These bold and vivid images did not fail to attract attention at the Impressionist exhibitions, in which Mary Cassatt participated assiduously (on four occasions, from 1879 onwards), at the invitation of her friend Edgar Degas. Mary Cassatt's essential contribution to these avant-garde exhibitions, which proclaimed themselves "independent", will be examined and reassessed. Her activities in the art market constitute another fundamental aspect of the artist's independence. She specialised in painting "mothers and children", a genre in high demand, at which she excelled – and with which she remained associated – while also honouring portrait commissions. A few key works in the exhibition will also evoke her crucial role as an "adviser", counselling her American relatives, friends and acquaintances in their purchases of paintings, notably Impressionist ones – and thus in the formation of art collections in the United States. At this stage in her career, in the early 1890s, Mary Cassatt's financial independence enabled her to become a landowner. Surrounded by a vast park, the château she acquired in the Oise served as the backdrop for numerous outdoor scenes populated by women and children: luminous works, with vibrant colours. Modern Woman, the most important commission the artist ever received, for a monumental mural intended for the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, marks a high point in her career and a major stage in her work. This colossal mural, now lost, will be evoked in the exhibition through a group of prints and pastels related to it, as well as through a film offering a digital restoration of this gigantic work (4 x 18m), unique in its ambition both for its dimensions and its subject. Her admirable series of prints, the Ten Colour Prints, will also be examined in the light of this remarkably experimental new phase of her work, and of her progressive views on the education of women. Mary Cassatt's commitment to independence indeed went beyond her own career and artistic approach. A fervent supporter of women's struggle for the right to vote, Cassatt encouraged her contemporaries to "work for suffrage, for it is women who will decide the question of the life or death of a nation." With her friend Louisine Havemeyer, she organised an exhibition in New York in 1915 in aid of women's suffrage. A small selection of paintings by Mary Cassatt shown in that exhibition concludes the exhibition, demonstrating how not only this pioneering artist's art, but also her actions, could tend towards activism.

Source: Paris Open Data ↗