Preface

Mathews, Nancy Mowll

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Preface

Nancy Mowll Mathews

Mary Cassatt: A Life

Preface

Author

Nancy Mowll Mathews

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23326

Preface

In addition to talent, it takes a strong personality, a receptive historical context, and a great deal of luck to become a successful artist. Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), an American artist who lived and worked in France for sixty years, enjoyed success, and it may be that she even has a chance for immortality. She had talent that was recognized and nurtured from an early age; she had a personality that allowed her to navigate a treacherous art world; she lived among people and in historical circumstances that gave her opportunities; and she had the good fortune to find a group like the Impressionists that made a lasting impact on world culture. Although it is too soon to claim immortality for her, it is undeniable that she has continually appealed to influential critics and historians interested in women and Impressionism, and they have kept her art in the public eye.

A success story such as Cassatt’s is always intriguing, and looking back on the twenty years that I studied Mary Cassatt’s art, it seems strange to me that I never attempted more than a cursory look at her life. As an art historian, I have studied her mother and child pictures, published the letters most relevant to her art, and dissected her color prints. But it is in Cassatt’s life that one finds answers to, or at least ideas about, many of the broader issues posed by her art. Why did she become as prominent as she did during her lifetime and after? Should we consider her an American or a French artist? What role did gender play in shaping her art? How did she balance her personal and professional lives and what effect, if any, did her life as a single woman have on her choice of the mother and child subject? Other questions also arose after I began delving into her life as a professional woman. Was she happy? Did she feel successful? How did she differ from some of her contemporaries, both women and men, in that she became famous and they did not?

These were the questions that I took to the documentary material about Mary Cassatt. The letters, memoirs, and other types of biographical evidence available today, seventy years after Cassatt’s death, provide a surprisingly vivid picture of the flesh-and-blood Cassatt. The more human she became, the more confusing she became. A life such as hers incorporated French and American influences simultaneously, it brought success and failure in alternating patterns, and it involved personal and professional decisions that were intertwined.

Mary Cassatt’s life and art as understood through historical evidence were so rich that I was reluctant to apply methodology that did not rest on documentation. I did not, therefore, apply Freudian, Lacanian, or any other psychoanalytic method to aid in interpretation. I was also reluctant to use deconstructionist methods whenever they strayed too far from a reasonable account of Cassatt’s own motives. But, of course, Cassatt’s art and life were often shaped by undocumented inner feelings—either emotions or consciousness of self or identity—and I felt free to make an effort at interpreting them.

Many people helped me with this work over the years, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. My research on Cassatt began in 1972 with my dissertation for the Institute of Fine Arts under the direction of Linda Nochlin and the late Gert Schiff. My first book, Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters, was researched with the aid of a Smithsonian postdoctoral fellowship under the guidance of Lois Fink of the National Museum of American Art. During these early years, I owed a great deal to the incomparable Adelyn Breeskin, who was senior curatorial consultant at the National Museum of American Art until her death in 1986. Mrs. Breeskin was a model of generosity in sharing her research with all upcoming Mary Cassatt scholars. In recent years my knowledge of the artist has been enriched by Suzanne Lindsay, Frances Weitzenhoffer, and Barbara Shapiro, all of whom have made significant contributions to Cassatt scholarship in the 1980s.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to members of the Cassatt family for their generosity in sharing letters and photographs as well as family lore. Their wish for anonymity makes public acknowledgment difficult but no less heartfelt. I would also like to thank Henry B. and Audrey Haldeman for sharing information from their family archives which brought their great-aunt Eliza Haldeman to life.

Many helpful people associated with archives, museums, and historical societies in the United States and France also deserve to be recognized for their kind assistance. These include Susan Stein and Alice C. Frelinghuysen of the Metropolitan Museum, Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy of Durand-Ruel & Cie., Albert Boime of U.C.L.A., Sandra Wheeler of Hill-Stead Museum, Melissa De Medeiros of M. Knoedler, Kevin Shue of the Lancaster County Historical Society, Caroline Carr of the National Portrait Gallery, Pamela Ivinski of Christie’s, and Ann Potter of the Archives of American Art. Special thanks goes to C. Gary Allison of the 1st Century Project, United States Olympic Committee, for sharing his information on the Sloane family, and to Susan Sheppard of the Villa Angeletto, and Beatrice Labuset of the Château de Bachivillers. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Lee Edwards, Elizabeth Harlan, Honor Moore, and Eunice Lipton in matters of style and subject matter.

In addition, I would like to thank those at Williams College who have made it possible for me to pursue independent research, especially Linda Shearer, director of the Williams College Museum of Art, who has been unfailingly supportive of my work, and my assistant, Ann Greenwood, who has often had to roll with the punches. Thanks also goes to the three who made this book actually happen—my agent, Gail Ross; my editor, Diane Reverand; and my guardian angel, Cathy Hemming—all of whom believed it was possible. For moral support during the daily details which are at the heart of any book, I would like to thank Ingrid Montecino.

All letters are in private collections unless otherwise noted.

ABBREVIATIONS

MC	Mary Cassatt
EH	Eliza Haldeman
LH	Louisine Havemeyer
ES	Emily Sartain
MMA	The Metropolitan Museum of Art
PAFA	The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

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