Cassatt Reconsidered

Fiercely
ambitious and independent, Mary Cassatt defied expectations to become one of
the most radical artists of the Impressionist movement, though she was-and
remains-the least understood. Cassatt commanded and manipulated strains of
old master and contemporary painting to express her female subjectivity
through a brilliantly modern oeuvre on par with those of the most revered
Impressionists. However, mishandled by the Parisian art establishment during
her lifetime, and later by art historians and curators, she became known
almost exclusively as a sentimentalizing painter of mothers and
children.

How did this happen to the most aspiring,
revolutionary female artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries? In Cassatt
Reconsidered, author Mary G. Morton probes this
central question and more, demonstrating how Cassatt disturbed conventional
ideals of femininity, childhood, and maternity, an uncompromising feat for
which she paid dearly during her lifetime and in the annals of art
historiography.

Vibrantly illustrated with more than 100
images, Cassatt
Reconsidered rewards readers with a fuller
understanding of an artist who stands apart for daring to express, on her own
terms, the unique, intimate experiences of modern women.