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Artist or Maker: MARY CASSATT (1844-1926)

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Dimensions: 32 by 25 3/4in. 81.3 by 65.4cm

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Provenance: Property from the Collection of Helene Rabb Cahners
Ambroise Vollard, Paris (acquired from the artist)
Galerie Vallotton, Lausanne
Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York (acquired from the above on November 4, 1960)
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Rabb, Boston, (acquired from the above on September 21, 1961)
By descent from the above

Exhibited
Waltham, Massachusetts, The Poses Institute of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, Boston Collects Modern Art, 1964, no. 13
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1968 (on loan)

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Notes: Literature:
Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1970, no. 404, illustrated p. 163

Reine Lefebvre with Blond Baby and Sara Holding a Cat (Maternité) depicts the warmth and familial tenderness characteristic of Cassatt's most successful compositions. Throughout her career, Cassatt's paintings had focused largely on the daily activities of modern women, but it was only in the 1880s that her portrayals of mothers with their children began to take precedence in her work. This transition was immediately noted by critics, who praised the images of women and children Cassatt submitted to the sixth Impressionist group exhibition in 1881. Cassatt took great care to capture the complexity of this very important relationship without being overly sentimental or unnecessarily stoic in her depictions, and her ability to celebrate the motif of mother and child in this way is one of the distinctly modern aspects of her art.

During a visit to America in 1898, Cassatt accepted a number of commissions by prominent collectors in Boston and New York. This support allowed the artist to develop her mastery of oil and pastel upon her return to France later that year. As John Bullard remarked about Cassatt's work from 1900, ''By this time most of Cassatt's pictures are marked by great simplicity and directness. Details of costume and background are suppressed, focusing the viewer's attention on the faces of her sitters. The background is generally plain and flat, and the figures are compactly grouped and silhouetted against it. The color scheme is also simplified: usually there are two dominant colors, with a contrasting third one as an accent" (Mary Cassatt: Oils and Pastels (exhibition catalogue), Washington, D.C., 1972, p. 64). In the present work, Cassatt uses jewel-like tones of red and green, which she accents with cooler shades of white and pink. Vigorous strokes of pigment are visible in Reine Lefebvre's red dress, the white of Sara's blouse, and the rich green of the background. Each figure in Reine Lefebvre with Blond Baby and Sara Holding a Cat (Maternité) is individually engaged, yet their poses and gestures link them together in an intimate, cohesive family group.

Like Degas, Cassatt became increasingly pre-occupied with the medium of pastel, and toward the end of her career it was her chief means of expression. Pastel allowed her to demonstrate her dynamic draftsmanship while simultaneously exploring color and tone. As Harriet Stratis notes, Cassatt claimed that pastel was '''the most satisfactory medium for (portraying) children.' It may have been the velvety and tactile qualities of the medium that led her to associate its use with the depiction of youth. The spontaneity that pastel allowed was surely an advantage when drawing children who could not or would not sit still for long periods of time. Furthermore the subjects of many of these works are engaged in the act of touching; the gentleness of a caress was perhaps best conveyed with the softest of media" (Harriet Stratis, Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Chicago, 1999, p. 221).

This work will be included in the forthcoming revised catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Mary Cassatt Committee.