Customer Reviews

Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman

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A collection of interesting essays (and representations of her works) on the artist and her life give the reader good, broad and varied sense about who Mary Cassatt was and how important she was in helping America to discover impressionism. MC is an artist that merits to be better recognized and this book serves a good purpose. - Yet for people that have already studied MC and want to learn more on detailed aspects of her art, this book will probably not be sufficient - Griselda Pollock has written a book i found very useful called 'mary cassatt painter of modern women' which has some well-founded arguments about her works and intentions and is very interesting and more original than this collection of well presented and nevertheless good essays.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was one of the few women artists to have succeeded professionally in her era, and the only American invited to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Extensively illustrated with paintings, prints and pastels spanning Cassatt's whole career, this volume, published to accompany a travelling exhibition in the USA, contains essays which trace the artist's development from her early influences to her critical role in bringing Old Master and Impressionist art to the United States. Supplementary works by Cassatt's contemporaries are reproduced, together with numerous photographs and a complete list of exhibitions in which she participated in her lifetime.

Cassatt was no Sargent or Hassam, but her style reflects sensitivity and charm. This is a great book to own about Cassatt, full of good plates and at a bargain price. You can't go wrong with this one!

I'm a semester into a fine arts degree and desperatly searching for a TRUE female role model in the painterly art.

Sigh - - - Mary Cassatt ain't it.

Sadly, I believe that, Mary Cassatt's only claim to LASTING aesthetic fame is that she is American and FEMALE: not that she had anything unique or new (in her time) to say in her paintings.