Shelburne Museum hosts a Major Mary Cassatt Exhibit

Written by John Sheridan Saturday, 17 September 2011 23:00

SHELBURNE, VT - Mary Cassatt: Friends and Family features more than 60 works by Cassatt and Edgar Degas, many of which are on loan from private collections and museums including, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Cassatt’s signature monumental mother-and-child works figure prominently in the exhibit. Little known family portraits and Cassatt’s personal correspondence add fresh insight into the artist’s world.

“Mary Cassatt’s ability to capture the bond between mother and child is unsurpassed,” said Director Stephan Jost. “In addition to exhibiting dozens of Cassatt’s finest works, this exhibit examines the artist’s relationships with key figures in her own life.”

For nearly a half century, Mary Cassatt and Louisine Havemeyer shared a friendship that sustained throughout a period of social, artistic and political upheaval in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Louisine Havemeyer was the mother of Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb. A Cassatt pastel of Louisine and young Electra is one Museum’s most prized works.)

Cassatt expert Nancy Mowll Mathews elucidates the relationship between Cassatt and Havemeyer along with other key figures in Cassatt’s life, Edgar Degas among them. Mathews contextualizes Cassatt’s work through these relationships offering the viewer an intimate and new look at the great Impressionist’s work. Dr. Mathews will give a lecture on the exhibit, Thursday, July 10 at 6:30 p.m. as part of the Museum’s Sunsets at Shelburne Museum series.

An exhibition catalogue, featuring essays by Dr. Mathews and Cassatt scholar Jay E. Cantor is available at the Museum Store and online at www.shelburnemuseum.org  The exhibit is on view in Webb Gallery through October 26, 2008.

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