'It is certainly the best monograph so far devoted to the artist. . . . One comes to the end of Pollock's book knowing a great deal more not only about Mary Cassatt, but about 19th-century painting and the situation at that time of women and children' - London Review of Books
This radically new study redefines the American artist Mary Cassatt's status in the Parisian avant-garde and in American Art, placing her work in the wider context of nineteenth-century feminism and art theory.
Cassatt's art explores a New Woman's perspective on the spaces of modernity: at the theatre, in the drawing-room and garden, in the studio. Admired by Degas - who invited her to show with the impressionists in 1877 - Cassatt's work reveals her profound study of Old Masters and keen responses to contemporary French and Spanish painters.
Griselda Pollock puts a new emphasis on Cassatt's interest in Manet and her influence on American collections of French modernism. She also shows that Cassatt's experimentation with etching and pastel from the late 1880s enabled her to represent children and women without sentimentality and with a deepening awareness of a complex psychological charge.
This radically new study redefines the American artist Mary Cassatt's status in the Parisian avant-garde and in American Art, placing her work in the wider context of nineteenth-century feminism and art theory.
Cassatt's art explores a New Woman's perspective on the spaces of modernity: at the theatre, in the drawing-room and garden, in the studio. Admired by Degas - who invited her to show with the impressionists in 1877 - Cassatt's work reveals her profound study of Old Masters and keen responses to contemporary French and Spanish painters.
Griselda Pollock puts a new emphasis on Cassatt's interest in Manet and her influence on American collections of French modernism. She also shows that Cassatt's experimentation with etching and pastel from the late 1880s enabled her to represent children and women without sentimentality and with a deepening awareness of a complex psychological charge.