Modernity's Limits

Two prints by the artist Mary Cassatt – The lamp and In the omnibus, were acquired by the National Gallery in October. Stored unframed and unseen by the public for six decades, the two perfectly preserved rare impressions join Afternoon tea party, which was purchased for the national collection in 1983. Together these three works belong to what become known as the ‘group of ten’ — the ten coloured drypoint and aquatint prints made in an edition of 25 by Cassatt between 1890–91 for her solo exhibition, held at the gallery of her dealer Durand-Ruel in Paris in April 1891. It is this group of works for which Cassatt, one of the pioneering modern women artists of the late-nineteenth century, is now most renowned.

In 1873 the North American born artist settled in Paris and remained in France until her death in 1926. It was there Cassatt established herself as an artist and became the only American to ever be invited to exhibit with the French Impressionist group. The invitation came from Edgar Degas, who Cassatt had met shortly after her arrival in the city. In artistic terms, the relationship between Cassatt and Degas is reflected most closely in both artists’ exploration of the interplay between public and private mores, and in the way they used drawing and printmaking in unison with painting as a primary artistic medium.

Historian Griselda Pollock writes in Mary Cassatt: painter of modern women: “Cassatt’s encounter with Degas in the 1870s was decisive and productive, for in him she found her alter ego who, by introducing her to experimental printmaking, prepared the way for her radical modernisation of a challenging subject: women and children”.

Cassatt and Degas also connected, as many modern artists of the period did, over their admiration for Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut prints. It was after visiting the Exposition de la gravure japonaise, an exhibition of 725 Ukiyo-e prints and illustrated books held in Paris in April 1890, that Cassatt made her ‘group of ten’.

Cassatt was especially interested in the work of Kitagawa Utamaro. Utamaro’s practice of making series of works that explored the subject of women, (almost exclusively courtesans), with children, at their toilettes, engaging in daily rituals such as tea-drinking and in the performative roles their social station required clearly inspired Cassatt. Like the Ukiyo-e prints, her group was designed to show scenes from the day in the life of a woman, but in doing so she substituted the courtesan for the western ideal of middle-class women and woodblocks for drypoint on thick copper plates.

Like the cloistered world of the Japanese courtesan, Cassatt created images of habitual privilege and confinement that were both gorgeous and melancholy in their depiction of women who chose the protection, and burden, of tradition. In her art, Cassatt spoke of the limits modernity set for middle-class women, and not of the more popularly held avant-garde belief in its permissive freedoms; it is this that sets her modern art practice apart from her male contemporaries and which garnered the respect of her peers.

Cassatt’s colour prints are among the most technically accomplished of the period. Made on a small printing press installed in her home studio in Paris, she used a time-consuming process of hand-inking, known as á la poupée, to achieve her trademark soft chalky colourings. Intentionally creating ‘imperfections’ or ‘faults’, often smudging to leave her ‘signature’ fingerprint, her method resulted in each impression being slightly different and therefore unique.

Although not widely commercially successful, Cassatt’s prints were acquired and closely held in the private collections of artists and dealers alike — over 90 were found in Degas’ studio after his death. Significantly, all three prints now in the national collection share an important provenance, having remained in the artist’s studio before being acquired directly from her by modern art dealer Ambroise Vollard.

He was one of Cassatt’s greatest admirers and, although he was primarily an art dealer and not simply a collector, there are no records to indicate that Vollard sold any ‘from the more than 500 prints and drawings he acquired directly from Cassatt’ in 1906 and 1913. When Vollard died in 1939 his inventory was purchased by collector Henri Petiet. A famously shrewd print dealer and the person responsible for issuing the Vollard Suite, the monumental print series Pablo Picasso made for Vollard between 1930 and 1937 (also in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection), Petiet not only kept many of Cassatt’s prints for himself but monogramed those which he wished to indicate were not for sale. While Afternoon tea party was among a group of Mary Cassatt prints Petiet sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 1980, the National Gallery’s two new acquisitions - marked with ‘HP’ - were never sold on the open market and have come from the heirs of Henry Petiet.

Among of the most sought-after prints made by any artist from the period, the National Gallery is the only Australian collecting institution to hold any impressions from this groundbreaking series. Over time, the Gallery hopes to acquire the remaining seven and complete the ‘group of ten’ for the national collection.

This article is from the Summer 2020 issue of Artonview, the National Gallery’s magazine for Members.