Mary Cassatt
Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree

ArtistAmerican,1844–1926, active France
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree
Date1896–1897
MediumDrypoint and aquatint on laid paper, state III/III
DimensionsPlate: 15 7/8 × 11 3/8 in. (40.4 × 29 cm)
Sheet: 19 3/4 × 15 3/8 in. (50.2 × 39.1 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by The Brown Foundation, Inc.
Object number2005.974
Non exposé

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Object Type
Description

Mary Cassatt was the only American, and one of only three women, to exhibit with the Impressionists. Early in her career, Cassatt thought of herself primarily as a painter, dismissing printmaking as reproductive and mechanical, but she later realized that prints provided a locus for experimentation and variation.


Working first in black and white, Cassatt began incorporating color into her prints after viewing the 1890 exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints at the école des Beaux-Arts. No other artist succeeded in adapting the spirit of the Japanese color woodcut to the Western medium of etching as effectively as Cassatt. In Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree, the combination of drypoint and aquatint shows remarkable juxtapositions of thin graphic lines and solid blocks of watery color. She underscores the stylistic idiom of Japonisme with flattened modeling, bold outlines, and an oblique use of perspective.


ProvenanceThe artist; [Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939), Paris]; to the Estate of Ambroise Vollard; Henri M. Petiet, Paris; inherited by the heirs of Henri M. Petiet, Paris; [Marc Rosen Fine Art Ltd., New York, by 2005]; purchased by MFAH, 2005.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed in graphite, in matrix bottom right: MC
Verso: Watermark, top center and lower center: VAN DER LEY, hunting horn with a shield (cf. Heawood 2749)
Catalogue raisonnéBreeskin 162; Mathews/Shapiro 20

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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