Thoroughly modern Mary?

The MFA trots out its Cassatt blockbuster

by Jeffery Gantz

"MARY CASSATT: MODERN WOMAN" At the Museum of Fine Arts through May 9.

It's blockbuster time again at the Museum of Fine Arts: "Monet in the Twentieth Century" was carted off barely a month ago and already the next take-it-to-the-bank Impressionist is being wheeled into place. Well, money does make the museum go. This show is even politically correct, its subject being in all likelihood history's most famous woman painter. (Artemisia Gentileschi? Berthe Morisot? Georgia O'Keeffe? No, it has to be Mary.) And it has the MFA's attempt at a she's-not-your-grandmother-she's-hip title, suggesting that Cassatt was the Madonna or the Courtney Love of her day. But, consciously or not, the MFA has in that title asked exactly the right question. What kind of woman was Mary Cassatt? And what does it mean to be a modern woman?

Mary Cassatt was born in 1844 in Pittsburgh, but her well-heeled family had (just like this reviewer) strong Philadelphia as well as Pittsburgh connections. She went to art school and then, in 1866, to Paris -- and the wonder is that there weren't more women like her in an age when painting was one of the few "serious" arts deemed suitable for young ladies. One of Cassatt's 1874 Salon paintings caught the eye of Degas; a few years later, after a Salon rejection, she joined the ranks of the Impressionists, making her debut with them in 1879. You can detect the immediate influence of the Japanese art that was shown at the École des Beaux Arts in 1890; and it seems a visit from her elder brother Alexander and his family started the flood of mother-and-child paintings. But though she lived until 1926 (just like Monet), her significant work ends with the 19th century -- the Boston version of this show (which opened in Chicago and will go on to Washington) offers not a single painting that postdates 1900.

How modern was Mary? She never married, and indeed her private life is pretty much a blank. A 1867 photo suggests a handsome, inquisitive young lady, not beautiful, but intelligent and attractive. She was attached to her family, and as they passed away -- her sister Lydia in 1882, her father in 1891, her mother in 1895 -- so her art seemed to fade. With few exceptions -- Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt (her brother; 1880) and Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son Robert Kelso Cassatt (1884-'85) -- her paintings depict women. Not "modern" women like actresses or dancers or chanteuses, but women of good social position doing what women of good social position do: reading the newspaper, drinking tea, looking after their children, all within the embrace of those material comforts that a good social position afforded. Yet there's something profoundly ambivalent about these women, and thus about Mary Cassatt as an artist. In the end they wind up looking as radical as any 20th-century woman (Madonna and Courtney included). Which is why "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman" is more than just an MFA moneymaker.

Just consider Portrait of a Little Girl (1878), which may be Cassatt's first mature Impressionist work (in the early '70s she painted in an academic Spanish style). The little girl is exquisitely dressed and exquisitely cradled in a blue floral armchair, but her squirmy, slouchy posture (this is no formal portrait) makes it clear she's bored, and Cassatt's Brussels griffon in the neighboring armchair doesn't appear much better off. Already Cassatt is deconstructing woman's place in society. Woman in a Loge (1878-'79) is right out of Henry James or Edith Wharton: the young lady (possibly Lydia), with her low-cut pink dress and fan, is herself a "painting" on exhibit, an object for male consumption. The woman in At the Theatre (1878-'79) and the two ladies in Women in a Loge (1881-'82) seem aware of their exposure: one hides herself with her fan, the others look resignedly straight ahead, as if anticipating a low "score" -- visual versions of Washington Square's Catherine Sloper.

And if you have no fan with which to cover yourself, there's always the newspaper. Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading (1876), Portrait of a Lady (1878), On a Balcony (1878-'79), and Woman Reading (1878-'79) all show women taking refuge, simultaneously asserting their rights (particularly the newspaper readers, who suggest their opinions are as important as any man's) and concealing their feelings (they're all lost in thought). The real world, Cassatt seems to be telling us (in her art and her life) is a scary affair.

Then there's afternoon tea, as catalogued in Tea (1879), Tea (1880-'81), Lydia at Afternoon Tea (circa 1880), The Lady at the Tea Table (1883), The Visit (1890-'91), and The Cup of Tea (1897). Tea (1879-'80) is one of Cassatt's most famous paintings -- that's the one with the striped wallpaper and the lady raising the tea cup to her face. If this were a photo, it would be merely slice-of-life realism. Instead, you have to ask yourself why Cassatt painted this woman hiding her face behind a tea cup. And why the other lady (possibly Lydia again), whose (empty?) tea cup is sitting on the silver tea tray, seems utterly lost without it. The tea service was Cassatt's own, and she obviously prized it, but the way these two ladies are circumscribed in the midst of their comfort suggests they want, and have a right to, something more. Those tea ladies who partake alone look bereft (of their audience?); the pair in the Japanese-inspired drypoint The Visit are locked into the social amenities, one trying to impress by offering the last biscuit, the other accepting it disdainfully.

Cassatt's ladies are locked up almost everywhere, whether it's Lydia Seated at a Tapestry Frame (1880-'81), Cassatt's mother in Mrs. R.S. Cassatt (circa 1889), the japonaise woman sealing an envelope (and concealing her mouth) in The Letter (1890-'91), or the solitary women of Portrait of a Lady (1877), Portrait of Madame J. (1879-'80), The Garden (1880), Autumn (1880), Lydia Seated in the Garden with a Dog in Her Lap (circa 1880), Lydia Seated on a Terrace Crocheting (1881-'82), Young Girl at a Window (circa 1883), Contemplation (1891-'92), and Revery (1891-'92). Their sole escape is into motherhood, and Cassatt joins them there, if only in the world of her imagination. In The Child's Bath (1880), we can't quite see all the mother's face, only her tender solicitude. By the late '80s Cassatt has taken up this subject in earnest: Young Mother (1888), Mother and Child (1889), Women with Her Child (1889-'90), Nude Child (1890-'91), The Child's Bath (1893), Breakfast in Bed (1897), Mother and Child (circa 1900), Young Mother (1900), The Mirror (circa 1905) -- too many to count. The most famous -- deservedly -- is Nude Child, a japonaise drypoint with a radiant mother. In Young Mother mother and child both look slightly preoccupied. In The Mirror both are looking in a mirror, their lone audience. The Family (1893) shows a young mother with a younger girl (daughter? sister?) and an infant. It's a family without men. The Boating Party (1894), another of Cassatt's most famous works, presents a woman and child with a man, but is he the father or just the boatman?

Mary Cassatt's life affords few answers. Her watercolor Self-Portrait (circa 1880) displays a smartly dressed young artist who'll never be quite comfortable with the next gentleman to pay his compliments. Edgar Degas's Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards (circa 1880-'84) shows us a slightly older seated (and sedate) lady holding what look like cartes de visite as if she were about to play solitaire. Like the women in her own paintings, this Mary Cassatt yearns after something beyond the freedom that 20th-century women have achieved -- love, perhaps, and respect. But she's not quite ready to risk the comfort and elegance that goes with being a 19th-century lady. Cassatt doesn't seem to have found the solution to this dilemma, in her art or her life, but the issues she raises make her a major artist.

They also make "Modern Woman" a major show, though the MFA comes up a little short in the actual exhibition. The layout -- by themes and more or less chronological -- is sensible and even thoughtful, and there's a "Salon Cassatt" room with books to browse, French music to listen to, and an interactive computer station where you can redesign Cassatt's work. What's missing is . . . some of her most famous paintings: Women in a Loge, Self-Portrait, Revery, The Boating Party, The Cup of Tea, Mother and Child (circa 1900), Young Mother, The Mirror, Woman at Her Toilette. And though the catalogue is the MFA's usual handsome affair (and very fairly priced at $30 for the paperback), it dodges the hard questions -- did Cassatt have any kind of emotional life? why does the quality and quantity of her art fall off so dramatically? -- in favor of creating a feminist icon and selling "Cassatt blend" tea and Cassatt tea cups (beautiful ones, I grant) in the gift shop. The real Cassatt icon is that lady hiding behind the tea cup in the MFA's own Tea (1879-'80), the one who's reluctant to let us see what she's thinking, even what she looks like. She's Mary Cassatt's finest self-portrait.