iMusée d'Orsay7e arrondissement
Mary Cassatt. Being Independent
Co-organised with London's National Gallery and Boston's MFA for Orsay's 40th anniversary, this retrospective of nearly 80 paintings, pastels and prints traces Mary Cassatt's career through her guiding principle of independence.
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In "Femme dans une loge" (1879), an elegant woman in pearls and gloves sits in a theatre box while a mirror behind her shows the nape of her neck. A collector bought it even though critics mocked it. Here the woman is the one looking.
The retrospective gathers nearly 80 paintings, pastels, drawings and prints from European and American collections, hung in rooms painted pearl gray, plum, slate blue and celadon green. Arts in the City found the layout airy. Of "Modern Woman", the 18-metre mural Cassatt made for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, only photographs survive, so the show reconstructs it digitally. She did it in six months to prove a point to the male Impressionists; your last point-proving reply to the impôts took three weeks.
Book a timed slot. Sortiraparis lists the Thursday late opening (to 9:45pm) at 12 euros. The colour prints hang in the celadon room, and the show ends with the paintings she lent to a 1915 suffrage exhibition in New York.
Editor's pick
In Femme dans une loge, a woman in pearls sits in a theatre box and does the looking herself. Nearly 80 works follow Cassatt, ending with a digital rebuild of her 18-metre Chicago mural, known only from photographs.
Look for
Femme dans une loge
A woman in pearls and gloves in a theatre box, a mirror reflecting her nape, cropped boldly so she is the viewer rather than the viewed.
En voiture
Cassatt's sister Lydia drives a cabriolet with a child beside her, a coachman behind, and the horse's rump cut off by the frame.
Le Thé, with its X-ray story
Two women at tea, one arriving and one receiving at home; X-rays show the tea service was moved several times.
The Modern Woman reconstruction
A digital version of the lost 18 by 4 metre Chicago mural, with women playing music, pursuing fame and picking fruit.
The colour prints in the celadon room
Her 1890s prints The Letter, The Lamp and Young Woman Trying on a Dress, made with Japanese-inspired flat colour.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
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Image credits
9
- Mary Cassatt. Being IndependentMary Cassatt, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Monet, Painting TimeNational Gallery of Art / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Contemporary Counterpoint: Vija CelminsVija Celmins, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
- Stan Douglas: Parallax© Stan Douglas. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner
- Musée d'OrsaySuicasmo, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Musée de l'OrangerieHomonihilis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Fondation CustodiaMOSSOT / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- MAD - Musée des Arts DécoratifsGFreihalter / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Jeu de PaumeGuilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0