Explore Inside Out: The Prints of Mary Cassatt

Inside Out: The Prints of Mary Cassatt, drawn primarily from the Lunder Collection, highlights Cassatt’s creative process and her fearless experimentation. Prevailing norms of the time limited Cassatt, a woman artist, with regard to the subject matter she could depict and the social spaces she could frequent. As an Impressionist printmaker, she focused on the domestic lives, social rituals, and leisure activities of women in nineteenth-century Paris. The experimental nature of these prints, combined with an attention to modern urban women, made these works quite unusual in their time. Yet, today, those very qualities of domesticity, intimacy, and privacy could be seen as reinforcing stereotypes of women. This exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how we each experience family, caregiving, and identity in our own lives, and to explore Cassatt’s extraordinary capacity to evoke mood, feeling, and setting.

Mary Cassatt favored two printmaking techniques: softground etching and drypoint. With softground etching, she would lay a pencil drawing over a copper plate coated in acid-resistant wax. Then she would retrace the drawing with some force, pushing down into the waxed surface to reach the metal. The paper would then be peeled away and the plate immersed in an acid bath, which would bite into the exposed copper, incising lines into it. The plate was then rinsed, cleaned of remaining wax, inked, and run through a press, transferring the image onto paper. Cassatt often combined softground etching with aquatint, a process that creates areas of tone rather than line. In the mid-1880s, Cassatt began making drypoints. With this medium, she would use a hard stylus or needle to incise lines directly into a copper plate, which was then inked and printed.

A number of works in this exhibition are not “complete,” but rather are test prints that Cassatt made to assess a composition in development. They shed light on her creative process, demonstrating that she was both methodical and inventive, willing to combine techniques and experiment with materials.

In 1879, Cassatt partnered with Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro on a project to publish a journal, Le Jour et la nuit (Day and Night), devoted to the fine art of printmaking. The publication never came to fruition, but we know that Cassatt had selected the opera box as the subject for her contribution to the inaugural issue. These two versions of In the Opera Box may depict Cassatt’s sister, Lydia, at the opera. They represent two successive stages of the composition’s development. Ultimately, Cassatt was not satisfied with what she had done and started over. The finished result was In the Opera Box (No. 3), also on view in this exhibition.

In the late 1870s, Cassatt worked on a number of paintings and prints related to the opera. Opera was a popular form of entertainment for wealthy Parisians in the late nineteenth century, and people attended to both see productions and be seen by others in attendance. Cassatt portrays her subject in the act of gazing, either at the stage or at others in the audience. The theater is reflected in the large mirrors behind her. The extended fan is both a form that echoes the curved lines found elsewhere in the print, and a fashion accessory that sets off a semi-private space in an otherwise very public setting.

In the print Baby's Back, Cassatt uses drypoint to carefully describe the weighty contours of the child’s body. In contrast, the woman’s slender, lightly rendered arm seems weightless, and belies the strength required to support a child at that age. Although there are differences between these two versions of the same print, in both the emphasis is retained on the play of gazes: the child looks into the distance as the woman peeks her head around to stare into the child’s eyes.

This is a ghostly and difficult to-read-work. As a first-state impression, Cassatt would have made this print to assess its initial composition before including additional details in later stages. Here she depicts a well-dressed woman sitting alone set against a dark background. The model’s facial features and the bouquet that will eventually sit in her lap (given the title) have not yet been added. The Bouquet most likely relates to Cassatt’s exploration of women at the opera, a prominent theme in her art. It bears a resemblance to Two Young Ladies Seated in a Loge, Facing Right.

Mary Cassatt began her career working almost exclusively as a painter. She embraced printmaking as an additional form of artistic expression in 1879. Her interest in prints stemmed from the innovative methods she saw used by the leading printmakers of the day, especially Edgar Degas. Working with Degas, Cassatt learned how to make prints and continued creating them for the rest of her life.

Cassatt’s prints reflect the lives of upper-class women in Paris in her day. They focus on scenes of domesticity, childcare, and outings to the opera. They were unconventional both in terms of technique—she would combine various printmaking methods—and subject matter, namely depictions of women’s inner states of mind, solitary moments, and intimate interactions with friends and family members. This focus on the interior experience of social and private spaces was entirely modern, and it continues to resonate with viewers more than a century later.

Cassatt often depicted her family reading at home, as seen in several prints in the exhibition. In the print Lydia Reading, Turned Toward Right, Cassatt’s sister, has her back to the window so that the natural light will fall on the pages of the book. She is enveloped in shadow, absorbed in the story she is reading. Cassatt liked to place her sitters in settings with sharp contrasts of light to enhance the feeling of seclusion and solitude.

Lydia Cassatt often modeled for her sister. She can be seen in several other prints in this exhibition, notably In the Corner of the Sofa (No. 2) and Before the Fireplace (No. 2). Cassatt depicts her in the family drawing room in Paris. This would have been a space for family and guests to gather, as for afternoon tea, but also one for quiet reflection. In these prints, Lydia appears isolated and lost in her own thoughts. She suffered from Bright’s disease, a historical classification for kidney failure, and passed away in 1882. Only a few impressions of Before the Fireplace (No. 2) were made by Cassatt for her immediate family, suggesting that it may have served as a memorial portrait of Lydia.

Mary Cassatt is best known for her tender scenes of women with small children. She began to explore the subject in the late 1880s in printmaking and painting. Some of the women pictured in these works were mothers, but many were paid caretakers who modeled for the artist. The scenes offer a glimpse of childcare in the homes of a privileged class, and provided Cassatt the opportunity to depict the human figure from multiple perspectives.

Critics, who were all male, remarked on Cassatt’s particular suitability for these kinds of subjects, noting that she was a woman artist. Joris Karl-Huysman, for instance, said at the time that “only a woman is able to paint childhood.” Cassatt may have been operating under certain limitations and expectations because of her gender, but she was nevertheless ambitious and experimental in terms of activating otherwise static interiors, shaping contours of juxtaposed bodies, and probing the psychological dynamics of domestic labor.

In Emmie and Her Child, the warmth and affection between mother and child here stems from the tender, playful nature of their interaction, and the dramatic backlighting that encloses these darkened figures in an intimate space. The simplicity of the composition and the visible experimentation with shading suggest that Cassatt may have made this unique impression (meaning, the only known print of this composition) as a learning exercise, not as a finished work in its own right.