Lot 24 : MARY CASSATT (1844-1926)
Sotheby's - New York - 22 May 2002
Description:
signed Mary Cassatt, l.r. pastel and charcoal on paper Executed circa 1898. In 1877 at the invitation of her friend Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt became the only American artist to join the French Impressionist group in Paris. Cassatt particularly admired Degas' work in pastel and his constructive criticism and continual efforts to introduce her to new techniques had a lasting effect on Cassatt's mature style. She wrote to her friend Louisine Havemeyer around 1915, "How well I remember nearly forty years ago seeing for the first time Degas's pastels in the window of a picture dealer in the Boulevard Haussmann. I would go there and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it" (Louisine W. Havemeyer, Sixteen to Sixty, 1993, p. 275). Like Degas, Cassatt became increasingly preoccupied by the pastel medium and by the 1890s it had become her primary means of expression. Pastel allowed Cassatt to demonstrate her accomplished draftsmanship while displaying a rich layering of color and tone. Ellen Mary Cassatt (1894-1966), the model for the present painting, was Mary Cassatt's niece and namesake. She was the daughter of Cassatt's younger brother J. Gardner Cassatt and his wife Jennie Carter. According to Nancy Mowll Mathews, "Of all her nieces and nephews, Ellen Mary Cassatt was the closest to her Aunt Mary. She was a frequent model for Cassatt from her earliest childhood. Ellen Mary was the one who most delighted in visiting her aunt in France, and it was she who inherited the Chateau de Beaufresne--a tribute to the liveliness she and her friends had brought to its halls during Cassatt's declining years" (Mary Cassatt, New York, 1987, p. 100). The present portrait was executed circa 1898 when Ellen was approximately 4 years old. As is often the case in Cassatt's portraits and figure studies, the pastel is very thickly applied around the face, which is the only fully realized part of the compos
Provenance:
Sale: Heritage Gala Art Auction, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 1972 Acquired by the present owner's parents at the above sale
