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MARY CASSATT
(American, 1844-1926)
Quietude, circa 1891
Drypoint, fifth state of five, on Japan paper
10 5/16 x 7 1/16” plate, 14 5/8 x 10 15/16” sheet
Purchase: The Collectors Fund, in honor of the Art Museum’s 25th Anniversary 2001.1

Pittsburgh native Mary Cassatt benefited from a rich, cultural upbringing. She traveled abroad as a child and, at the age of sixteen, enrolled in art classes at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1866, Cassatt once again sailed for Europe and continued her studies in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme and other renowned teachers. Her family joined her in 1877, and although Cassatt regularly exhibited in the United States, she ultimately made Paris her home. She was not only a leading Impressionist painter but also a premier printmaker. Her works on paper, although lesser known than her paintings, are a central part of her artistic legacy. In her drypoints, aquatints, and monotypes, Cassatt explored her favorite subject: the intimate moments of a woman’s life—sitting, dressing, bathing—and especially the quiet times shared by mothers and their children. During the 1880s, she and Edgar Degas worked side by side perfecting their printmaking techniques. Cassatt’s mature drypoints from the years 1890-1910 reveal her strengths as a consummate draftsman; her works are admired for the concise and expressive use of line, the elimination of irrelevant detail, and an emphasis on facial expressions and gestures. In Quietude, for example, Cassatt depicts a loving and pensive mother tightly clutching her child to her breast and does not focus on the completion of her dress, the child’s feet, or the background setting.