The Musée Jacquemart-André, from March 9 to July 23, 2018, hold a major retrospective devoted to Mary Cassatt (1844-1926).
Mary Cassatt, circa 1889, John J. Emery Fund © Cincinnati Art Museum
Considered during her lifetime as the greatest American artist, Mary Cassatt lived in France for more than sixty years. She was the only American painter to have exhibited her work with the Impressionists in Paris.
The exhibition focuses on the only American female artist in the Impressionist movement; she was spotted by Degas in the 1874 Salon, and subsequently exhibited her works alongside those of the group.
This monographic exhibition enable visitors to rediscover Mary Cassatt through fifty major works, comprising oils, pastels, drawings, and engravings, which, complemented by various documentary sources, convey her modernist approach — that of an American woman in Paris.
Just like Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt excelled in the art of portraiture, to which she adopted an experimental approach. Influenced by the Impressionist movement and its painters who liked to depict daily life, Mary Cassatt’s favourite theme was portraying the members of her family, whom she represented in their intimate environment.
Her unique vision and modernist interpretation of a traditional theme such as the mother and child earned her international recognition. Through this subject, the general public discover many familiar aspects of French Impressionism and Postimpressionism, along with new elements that underscore Mary Cassatt’s decidedly American identity.
The exhibition bring together a selection of exceptional works loaned from major American museums, such as Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Terra Foundation in Chicago; works also be loan by prestigious institutions in France — the Musée d’Orsay, the Petit Palais, INHA, and the BNF (French National Library) — and in Europe, such as the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and the Bührle Foundation in Zurich. There are also many works from private collections. Rarely exhibited, these masterpieces are be brought together in the exhibition for the first time.
Curator of the exhibition: Dr. Nancy Mowll Mathews. Chief Curator and Lecturer Emeritus, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., USA. Specialist Mary Cassatt.
Jacquemart-André Museum, 158 bd. Haussmann, 75008 Paris – France.
Opening hours: open 7 days a week, from 10am to 6pm.
More information: www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com
