RUKUS.news

Paris exhibition puts overlooked American artist Mary Cassatt back at heart of impressionism

30m

Summary

  • The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened an exhibition of 80 Mary Cassatt works aiming to restore her to her place at the heart of French impressionism.
  • Cassatt, an American painter, friend and collaborator of Edgar Degas, exhibited with Monet and Pissarro but has been largely overlooked in France since her death in 1926.
  • The show includes previously unseen paintings, pastels and prints from private collections, unpublished letters, and a colourised reconstruction of her lost mural Modern Woman.
  • Modern Woman, a 4-metre by 18-metre mural made for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, was the work Cassatt was most proud of and has long disappeared.
  • The exhibition will transfer to the National Portrait Gallery in London and then to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
  • Cassatt was born into a wealthy Pennsylvania banking family, moved to Paris in 1866, and described herself as 'American, American through and through'.

Reactions

  • Curator Caroline Corbeau-Parsons said Cassatt was overlooked because she was a woman and a foreigner, and stereotyped for her subjects of women and children.
  • Curator Anne Robbins said Cassatt was neglected in France as a foreign woman whose paintings mostly went to US collectors, leaving few in French national collections.
  • Robbins said Cassatt's presence in the Musée d'Orsay is far less prominent than fellow impressionists Berthe Morisot and Marie Bracquemond.
  • The exhibition's organisers hope it will put Cassatt back in her rightful place in the history of impressionism.

Timeline newest first

  1. The Musée d'Orsay in Paris opened an exhibition of 80 Mary Cassatt paintings, pastels and prints, unpublished letters, and a colourised reconstruction of her lost mural Modern Woman.
  2. The exhibition aims to place Cassatt back in her role as an active member and pillar of France's impressionist group after a century of neglect following her 1926 death.
  3. Only one retrospective of Cassatt's work has been held in France in the century since her death in June 1926, despite her living there for 32 years.
  4. The exhibition will transfer to the National Portrait Gallery in London in January 2027 and then to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Sources newest first

  • Reclaiming Mary Cassatt: putting overlooked American artist back at heart of impressionismtheguardian.com· 30m

    A Guardian feature reports that a new Musée d'Orsay exhibition of 80 works, letters, and a colourised reconstruction of her lost mural Modern Woman aims to restore Mary Cassatt, Degas's American friend and collaborator, to her place at the heart of French impressionism after a century of being overlooked there. Curators attribute her neglect to her being a foreign woman whose paintings went mostly to US collectors.