Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives [Hardcover]

Debra N. Mancoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Via paintings, prints, and pastels created by Mary Cassatt throughout her career, this book explores the main facets of feminine life--solitary, social, public, and intimate--and offers an intriguing look into the world of women in the late 19th century. 50 color photos. 10 archival prints.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For readers who are looking for an instructive first glance or an introduction to Mary Cassatt, this book is perfect. The medium-sized volume contains a biography of Cassatt by art historian Debra Mancoff and also offers reproductions that are surprisingly large and clear. These plates give readers as accurate a view as is possible in a book of Cassatt's virtuoso brushwork, sure-handed lines, and soft, deep aquatints.

Mancoff includes many of the artist's piquant remarks (as well as quotes from her friends and acquaintances, who found Cassatt often charming, always impressive, and sometimes "slashing" in her outspokenness). Upon seeing Degas's work for the first time, Cassatt flattened her nose against the window of the shop where they were shown, "to absorb all I could." When Degas urged her to exhibit with the impressionists instead of in the stuffy, official French salon, she "accepted with joy," she wrote. "I hated conventional art. I began to live." Mancoff has a nice touch with details, and her book should be just right for anyone who wants to learn more about this gifted and ambitious artist. The long, enriched captions for the plates are like the tape-recorded tours that accompany major exhibitions. They give the reader enough historical and critical background to make the works of art as meaningful as possible. --Peggy Moorman

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556708521
• ISBN-13: 978-1556708527
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 9.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reproductions, good text, great price, May 9, 2001

By 

Christopher P. Atwood (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives (Hardcover)

This book supplies excellent reproductions of most of Mary Cassat's most famous paintings. Having seen the original of the cover painting in the Art Institute in Chicago, I can say the often distorted color tones are accurately photographed here.

The text is a very readable discussion of how Mary Cassat's paintings reflect women's lives in the late nineteenth century. Those looking for more painterly criticism--composition, palatte, influences, brush-work, etc. will not find much of that in this book. As Digby Baltzell wrote in his "Puritan Boston, Quaker Philadelphia," by 1900 American painting was dominated by John Singer Sergeant, Cecilia Beaux, and Mary Cassat, all of whom shared a Yankee background (mixed with French for Cassat and Beaux), connections in Philadelphia, extensive European experience, and a firm place in the social elite. Without idealization or false nostalgia, Debra Mancoff shares Mary Cassat's loving regard for the importance of the feminine side of this world of gentility.

Did I say it was a great deal? If good reproductions in a solid hardback binding of a great painter's oeuvre are what you are looking for this is a very good buy.