Mary Cassatt 1845-1926

The artist
Durand-Ruel et Cie, Paris, France, 1909
Helen Sears, Boston, Massachusetts (acquired from the above), 1910
Mrs. Montgomery Sears, Boston, Massachusetts
Childs Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Mr. and Mrs. Louise Brechemin (acquired from the above), 1964
Gift from the above to the present owner, 1964

Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, Memorial Collection of Works of Mary Cassatt, December 1926-January 1927, no. 7
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Mary Cassatt Memorial Exhibition, 1928, no. 46

G. Newman, "The Greatness of Mary Cassatt," American Artist, February 1966, 42
Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors and Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1970, no. 536, p. 197, illustrated
Jay Roudebush, Mary Cassatt, New York, 1979, p. 75, illustrated in color p. 87
James Harold Leach, Antiques and Collectibles Magazine, February 1982
Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt, New York, 1987, pl. 127, p. 141, illustrated p. 143

Paterson Sims writes, "Living in France from 1874 on, the U.S. born Mary Cassatt showed at the 1873 Paris Salon and was invited by her famous mentor, the painter Edgar Degas, to exhibit with the independents in 1877 and the impressionists in 1879.  Upon no other American artist were such honors bestowed.  After 1890 she turned increasingly to the subject for which she became best known, mother and children.  This aspect of her art overshadowed its essential concern with portraying the domestic scene in a careful but impressionist style that conferred a meditative calm on all her subjects.  This typical work is among about 15 depictions in pastel and oil of the same French model, called Françoise to facilitate designation, all done around 1908.  At the end of that year, at the age of 65, Cassatt made her final visit to the United States.  After her return to France the following year, her eyesight increasingly impaired, she painted less and less.

"In this example Cassatt's adept handling of pastel is looser and more gestural (note the treatment of the girl's hair and the book) than the rest of the highly resolved composition.  At the upper left, above the same square-backed chair seen in other views of Françoise, a truncated rectangle of landscape is visible through the window.  This view of nature is seen, as always in Cassatt's work, as a backdrop to the figure.  The inclusion of the window is a convention of Renaissance portraiture, first used in Flanders to suggest the sitter's role in the world at large, but here providing but a rectangle of green within a resolutely domestic world."