In its newly unveiled ode to painter Mary Cassatt, The Art Institute of Chicago pays tribute to a woman who lived on her own terms.
The new exhibit “Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism”— the museum’s marquee show of the fall season and its first deep-dive into Cassatt in more than 25 years — features about 70 of Cassatt’s paintings, pastels and prints. The show includes “The Child’s Bath,” a standout part of the museum’s permanent collection since it was acquired in 1910.
Cassatt was born in 1844 in Pennsylvania but lived most of her life in France. She is perhaps best known for her association with the French Impressionists, including Edgar Degas, who invited her to exhibit with the avant-garde clique of art radicals.
But this new exhibit looks beyond that period of Cassatt’s career to all that came next and reinterprets the groundbreaking American female artist, 100 years after her death.
“There is real momentum in the scholarly world and the museum world to think anew about an artist that we think we know, and it’s an opportunity to celebrate her work again,” said curator Annelise K. Madsen. “But also dig in and understand and expand that story about what kind of work Cassatt created through a lifetime of art-making.”
The show also highlights the artist’s ties to Chicago, including a now-lost mural commissioned for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. And it delves into the inspiration she drew from Japanese printmakers and her deep exploration of her signature subject matter: women and children in everyday moments.
On Monday — after what museum staff called a well-attended opening weekend, including two days of a members-only preview — the galleries buzzed with the energy of dozens of attendees who filled the space just as doors opened.
The show begins with Cassatt’s early works, some of which demonstrate a Renaissance influence. But there are also signs of what Cassatt became best known for: depicting fellow women as they were in their everyday lives, whether reading the newspaper, seeing an opera or tending to children.
The exhibition then leads attendees down a hallway to encounter “The Child’s Bath,” which shows a mother in a striped dress with her hair pulled back, washing her youngster’s feet. On Monday, one attendee held her own fussy toddler and pointed to the picture on the wall.
The instantly recognizable 1893 work is, as Madsen says, “the bridge” to the rest of the exhibit. In one direction, the show dives into Cassatt’s exploration of printmaking, inspired by a show she saw in Paris, featuring Japanese woodblock prints from the 17th to 19th centuries.
“She was really energized by what she saw,” said Madsen. “And was thinking about how she could translate those aesthetics into something that worked for her.”
The other side of the gallery showcases Cassatt’s ongoing depiction of mothers and children. Despite Cassatt not having children of her own, Madsen said she brought a “seriousness” and “a sense of purpose” to her subjects.
“There’s a real sense of presence there that is a note that she hits on again and again,” Madsen said, adding that Cassatt is also in an ongoing exploration of her technical expertise, through color, material and pattern.
“That’s one of the things that, for me, is so fascinating about Cassatt that it’s always about this subject, but it’s always also about what she can do formally with the materials in hand,” Madsen said.
The third component of this part of the show is dedicated to the now-lost mural Cassatt created for the World’s Fair in Chicago’s Jackson Park.
In the early 1890s, she was commissioned to create “Modern Woman,” which spanned 60 feet in length and stood 14 feet high for the fair’s Woman’s Building. It was a laborious undertaking that Cassatt had nine months to complete. In a letter to a friend, Cassatt reflected on the scale of the project, saying, “I certainly did not spend the summer in singing and dancing, but in the hardest of work.”
The result was a triptych that showed more than 20 women and girls in nature: tending to an orchard, chasing a personification of fame, and dancing and playing music.
Mary Cassatt’s “Modern Woman” mural in progress, c. January 1893. The mural, unveiled at the 1893 World’s Fair, has been lost to history.
From Maud Howe Elliott, ed., “Art and Handicraft in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893″ (Goupil, 1893), 25. Courtesy of the Art Institute
Mary Cassatt’s mural “Modern Woman” hangs inside the Woman’s Building in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
Hall of Honor, Woman’s Building, looking south toward Mary Cassatt’s mural, “Modern Woman,” at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. From Hubert Howe Bancroft, “The Book of the Fair” (Bancroft, 1893), 3:269. Courtesy of the Art Institute.
The massive piece helped raise Cassatt’s profile in the United States and made her one of the early women artists to complete a public mural in the U.S. And, due to Cassatt’s assertiveness, she also earned the same pay as the male muralists in the fair, according to Madsen.
The Woman’s Building was demolished after the fair. And Cassatt’s mural was either lost or destroyed — it was last accounted for in 1912. Still, Madsen said, it’s an important part of the story. “One of the objectives of the exhibition is to piece together that story and try to bring it back to life for visitors,” Madsen said.
The exhibit does that, in part, through a series of easel-sized artworks, which feature many of the same women and similar scenes that were depicted in the mural.
Through her three-year exploration of Cassatt, Madsen said she gained a better understanding of the artist as a “relentless experimenter.”
“She is pathbreaking at every moment, really,” said Madsen. “I think the determination, the grit to go out and do something that is not what’s expected of you, but is what you want for yourself, is a story that many of us can cheer for and take something from.”
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.