Katherine Cassatt Reading to her Grandchildren (La Lecture)

~Mary Cassatt made her real debut at the age of thirty-four when the Impressionist exhibition opened on April 10, 1879. While we know little about what kind of “openings” the Impressionists held, it was common at that time to have a reception of some sort for which invitations were sent to friends, family, and VIPs to see the exhibition before it was open to...

~~IN 1889 MARY CASSATT, EVA GONZALÈS’S erstwhile contemporary and fellow Realist, was occupied with the last of four portraits in oil that she painted of her mother, Katherine Cassatt, then aged 74...

From the outset of her affiliation with the French impressionists, Mary Cassatt played dual roles as artist and American ambassador. The dealer Ambroise Vollard recalled in his memoirs that “it was with a sort of frenzy...

Nineteenth-century practice was to varnish paintings at the very last minute, when the work was already hanging in the exhibition: oil paintings had to be left the maximum time possible to dry before the varnish was applied. The vernissage, varnishing day – the day before the exhibition opened to the public – was an institution during...