Mary Cassatt: Paintings and Prints

by Frank Getlein

Book Overview

Mary Cassatt's paintings and prints have long been treasured as some of the finest examples of Impressionist art. A rebel by the Victorian standards of her time, Mary Cassatt moved from the art schools of staid Philadelphia to the boulevards of Paris, where the young Impressionist movement was flourishing. Degas, her friend and mentor, encouraged her involvement in the new art movement.

Cassatt's luminous, observant, and innovative works-chiefly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0896591557
• ISBN13: 9780896591554
• Release Date: November 1980
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.8" x 11.1"

Customer Reviews

Eye of the Independent

She called herself one of the Independents. The world remembers her as the Impressionist who painted "The Boating Party," the choice for a first-class U.S. postage stamp and one of the most widely reproduced paintings. She was behind America's first purchase of Impressionist art: a Degas painting. In fact, friend and mentor Edgar Degas advised her on the farther window light and floor for "Little Girl in an Armchair" and praised "Girl Arranging her Hair," the Japanese woodblock print inspired "Bath," and "Mother and Boy."The book's first plate, "The Bacchante," lets viewers know what MARY CASSATT: PAINTINGS AND PRINTS were all about: women communicating with others and hinting at states of mind behind beautifully lighted and shaded fabrics, such as "Woman with a Red Zinnia"; flesh, such as the swiftly scribbled modeling to "Mother, Young Daughter and Son"; and furnishings, such as the Opera House banquette and chandelier ovals taking up the ovals from the figure and reflected figure of her sister "Lydia Leaning on her Arms, Seated in a Loge." Art critic and historian Frank Getlein backs his well-written text with 72 well-chosen plates. His book and Griselda Pollock's MARY CASSATT: PAINTER OF MODERN WOMEN give the perfect examples for Michel Melot's THE IMPRESSIONIST PRINT, Paul Smith's IMPRESSIONISM, Gary Tinterow's ORIGINS OF IMPRESSIONISM, and Helene Barbara Weinberg et al's AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM AND REALISM.