Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th-Century Paris

Special Exhibition

Saturday, October 13, 2012–Monday, January 21, 2013

Location: Prints and Drawings Gallery

*After the Bath* (detail), c. 1901. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Pastel; 66.00 x 100.00 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of J. H. Wade 1920.379

Featured Art

After the Bath, c. 1901. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Pastel; 66.00 x 100.00 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of J. H. Wade 1920.379
The Bath, 1891. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint; 43.2 x 30.1 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles T. Brooks 1941.70
After-Dinner Coffee, about 1889. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Graphite (recto); transferred soft (etching) ground (verso); 20 x 14 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin 2009.137
In the Omnibus, 1890–91. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Color drypoint and aquatint; 36.60 x 26.80 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles T. Brooks 1941.71
Woman and Child with a Woman Cleaning Combs, late 1790s. Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, 1754–1806). Color woodcut; 38.2 x 25.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Edward L. Whittemore 1930.216
Dancers, 1896. Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). Pastel; 55.2 x 41.0 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade 1916.1043

About The Exhibition

Primarily drawn from the permanent collection, this exhibition will juxtapose the museum's strong holdings of works on paper by Mary Cassatt with images of women by her contemporaries such as Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, James Tissot, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Organized thematically, the exhibition will explore 19th-century visions of femininity ranging from the bourgeois wife and mother to peasant women of the countryside in the midst of rural labor to urban women at work in the ballet and the brothel.