Historically, the subjects of ’s Impressionist paintings—women and children who sit in gardens, lounge in armchairs and come together for afternoon tea—have sometimes been viewed as frivolous. “For decades,” writes art critic Deborah Solomon for the , Cassatt “was dismissed as a paintbrush-wielding patrician unconnected to the make-it-new spirit of modern art.” That perception, however, has fallen out of fashion in recent decades.
The art world has slowly started to embrace the painter as a forward-thinking feminist whose works shed light on the invisible labor performed by women. That’s the framing behind “ ,” the first large-scale exhibition of the artist in the United States in 25 years. On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through September 8, the show features over 130 artworks and “rarely seen personal correspondence” that illuminate her “six-decade-long career investigating the interconnections of gender, labor and agency,” per a from the museum.
Born to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania in 1844, Cassatt lived most of her adult life in France, where she befriended and became an early American member of the French movement. Her body of work is particularly concerned with the private and social lives of women, as well as the relationships forged between mothers and children. Cassatt’s life didn’t exactly mirror what she depicted in her work.
She never married or had children. Instead, she was devoted to her “serious” work as an art.
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