Customer Reviews

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

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Art and life. Life and art. The lines pf demarcation aren't' visible in this richly imagined story of the relationship between Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1847 - 1926) and her older sister, Lydia, who sometimes served as Cassatt's model. Using five of the artist's paintings as springboards the author offers a moving story of courage and creativity, while she renders a fascinating study of the times in which the women lived.

Although suffering painfully, from a terminal illness, Bright's disease, Lydia continues to model for her sister, relentlessly scanning each finished portrait as if it foretold her future. Chessman conceives of Lydia as a study in patience and resignation, imagining that painter Edgar Degas, who often visited the sittings, said to Lydia, "You show me how to live, if only I could do it as you do."

In addition to exploring a unique sibling bond "Lydia Cassatt Reading The Morning Paper" suggests aspects of Cassatt's daring life, hints at a liaison with the dynamic Edgar Degas, and presents thumbnail sketches of her interaction with such artists as Renoir and Caillebotte.

Lydia, we learn, died in 1882 while Cassatt lived to create for over thirty more years.

Rather than a sad reflection on a too short life, Chessman, with pitch-perfect prose, has penned a celebration of family, love, and art.

- Gail Cooke

Lydia Cassatt (1837-82) was the older sister of the avant-garde American-born Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). This lovely novella, 'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper' by Harriet Scott Chessman, is set in Paris and its environs in the late 1870s to early 1880s and recreates a fictional portrayal of their life en famille and with close friends like Edgar Dégas, the French Impressionist. Because it was the time of the Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, there are mentions of other artists such as Gustave Caillebotte, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Berthe Morisot. Lydia often posed for Mary, which she found to be 'a form of enchantment.' Afflicted with Bright's disease, a fatal disease of the kidneys, Lydia endured much pain and weakness to sit still while her sister painted her. Through the use of internal monologue in a stream-of-consciousness Impressionistic style, Ms. Chessman allows the reader to experience the passing thoughts, memories, and reflections of Lydia. Lydia had remained an unmarried woman because her fiancé had been killed in the Civil War. Mary (called May) was also unmarried, through choice, because she did not wish to compromise her artistic career with marriage and motherhood.

Included in the pages of this novella are five beautiful color plates of paintings of Lydia by Mary Cassatt. Each of the five short chapters contains almost a meditation on each painting. Through the imaginative writing of Ms. Chessman, I learned more about the details of Cassatt's paintings, such as the possible meaning of a scarlet sash in 'Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly' (1880); that there was a pair of Mary's burgundy leather gloves resting on the loom in 'Lydia Seated at a Tapestry Frame' (1880/81); and that the little girl in 'Woman and Child Driving' (1879) was Edgar Dégas's niece. Mary painted the cover portrait of Lydia, 'Woman Reading,' in 1878/79, and the novella gave me a glimpse of what Lydia might have been thinking and feeling while she posed for it. Lydia's preference was to read poetry by Tennyson rather than the Le Journal newspaper that she is holding in this portrait. Mary Cassatt's portraits of Lydia look unposed, so I was somewhat surprised to read about the sessions where the silently suffering Lydia had posed for hours.

This novella has inspired me to view Mary Cassatt's work with a fresh eye. Now looking at the vivacious décolletage portrait of 'Lydia in a Loge, Wearing a Pearl Necklace' (1879), which is not discussed in this book, I might imagine her enjoying a rare night out at the opera, possibly in a happier mood. Lydia was model and muse for Mary, and 'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper' shows a contemplative reflection of the artist's gaze.

I was a huge fan of Tracy Chevalier's "Girl with a Pearl Earring", so I was most interested to read Harriet Chessman's novel about Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia - the inspiration for many of her impressionist paintings. Chessman's style is elegant, and spare, and she limns a portrait as lovingly as Cassatt painted Lydia. If I have any criticism, it's that I wished the novel had a broader scope - it covers a very brief period when Cassatt and her family lived in Paris. I wanted to know more about the family before they came to Europe, and how at that time in history a woman was able to rise to such prominence in the epicenter of the birth of modern art. Chessman is an accomplished writer, and yet the book is not as deeply felt as it could be, perhaps because of its brevity. Still, it is a tale well worth the telling, and a pleasure to read.

This compassionate, beautifully written tale celebrates life, death, art, poetry, and sisterhood. It lacks the bitterness of Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I didn't care for at all. You will never look at these paintings in the same way again. It also reminded me of the beauty of what my own sister left behind. Many thanks to the author for such a compelling book.

At first glance, I read this book hoping for insight into the life of the painter Mary Cassatt. But the book's truest strength lies in its observations on death and life, and art's role in it. A quiet, understated and beautifully written book. For other books on a similar theme, try Girl in Hyacinth blue by Susan Vreeland (about a painting presumed to be a Vermeer) and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chavalier, also about Vermeer.

Harriett Scott Chessman's prose moves with the deceptive beauty of a ballet dancer, its weightless grace diverting attention from the muscularity powering every gesture. Nothing is squandered, as this wisp-thin novel offers up more sharp-eyed observation and insight than books five times its girth.

Consider the narrator's description of Edgar Degas, whom she likens to a dog. "He bit into subjects --- the foolishness of one artist or another, the insipidity of someone's latest effort, I can't remember --- all the while his eyes lit on things in our apartment, with an air of studying and maybe breaking them: the tea set, the Japanese vase on the mantel, me."

LYDIA CASSATT READING THE MORNING PAPER is a fictionalized story based on the relationship between the American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt and her sister, Lydia, who narrates the story. The novel revolves around sessions in which Lydia poses for her sister. Lydia, 41, is dying of Bright's disease. On a good day, sitting and holding a newspaper while Mary paints her is physically exhausting. On a bad day, getting out of bed would be an impossible trick.
Mary, seven years her junior, is on the cusp of realizing her creative ambitions, having been accepted as the only woman in the inner circle of late 19th Century impressionists who were stirring up Paris and the art world.

These sisters savor their time together because they deeply love each other and they know they'll soon be parted. Much goes unspoken. The younger sister avoids acknowledging that Lydia has little time left and the older woman doesn't force the conversation. They communicate through the work. "I was sick again this morning, and May (Lydia refers to her sister by this nickname throughout) looked discouraged as she helped me wash my face and get dressed. I wonder whether this will be May's last picture of me. I think May wonders this too, because there's a new quietness between us. She's intensely focused on her work, and she paints for a long time without a pause."

The third and only other significant character in the book is Degas. In real life, Degas was Lydia's close friend and mentor. They may or may not have been lovers. In Chessman's novel, there is a romance, though it is only glimpsed through Lydia's observations. "He touched the nape of May's neck. He caressed her for a moment and she leaned into him." Such passages poignantly capture Mary's combination of tender joy for her sister, curiosity and yearning for a type of love that she knows is only in her past. The descriptions of Degas are among the best parts of this luminous book. Lydia knows well the famous painter's reputation for cruelty but experiences only kindness and respect from him. She regards him with affection, but is never completely at ease. "...this sensation of being protected from the Cyclops by the Cyclops itself, while he eats everyone else in sight --- well, it's fragile at best," Lydia says.

The novel holds no suspense in its plot --- the reader knows the ending from the first page --- but it manages to continually surprise with its startlingly lovely language. There is little in the way of action --- a paintbrush flutters across a canvass, cider spills in the grass. The novel takes on big themes --- the love between sisters, artistic passion, even mortality --- but it does so one tiny, exquisite detail at a time.

--- Reviewed by Karen Jenkins Holt

Harriet Chessman has written a beautiful novel about an unusual woman: Mary Cassat, the Impressionist painter who lived in Paris, was a lover of Degas, and a fully emancipated woman during a time when woman were assigned either to the bedroom or the kitchen; a woman who prefered her art and her freedom to marriage and conformity. More than that, it is, in fact, a novel about two women: Mary and her favorite model -- her sister Lydia -- who, while fatally ill with Bright's Disease, posed for many of Mary's paintings.

It's such a beautiful and original work on many levels. Each of it's five chapters features a color reproduction of a painting of Lydia, and each painting is a take-off point for the narrator: what she was thinking and feeling, what she was observing about Mary and her friends, and what she felt about the dichotomy of mortality of the flesh and the immortality of the paintings.

This novel is a recent example of the trend in using an artist's life or body of works to create work of fiction. Thanks to the author's imagination, talent and historical research, I was able to far better appreciate the paintings reading the book than I was in my art history classes 20 years ago.

This is an extraordinarily moving and beautifully written novel. Chessman takes the reader somewhere new: to the inner life of a famous painter and her dying sister. We see Paris in the 1880s; we meet Degas and the Mary Cassatt; we relive the sudio sessions in which Lydia Cassatt sat as a model for her sister Mary. And beyond all that, we come to confront our own mortality as Lydia poses bravely for her sister, living on in paintings that capture the delicate ties between sisters, between women, among artists and their models. This is a book about life and death, art and love, beauty and transcience. I could not put it down once I started reading it, and I can't stop thinking about it now that I have finished. I recommend it to all.

I loved this book and sorry I didn't know about this author sooner but happy someone told me about this title. Lydia Cassatt, is Mary Cassatt's older sister who suffers with Bright's Disease. Mary paints her sister in several paintings and each chapter brings the painting to life with story and life in the Cassatt household.

Beautiful writing and really makes me want to visit the art gallery. There are 5 plates of the paintings within the book to reinforce the image with the chapters ~ really good and short enough to read in one sitting.