Degas/Cassatt

This is the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery in Washington, from May to October 2014. The closeness of the relationship between Degas and Cassatt is part of the standard lore of Impressionism and has been written about extensively, mostly from the point of view of the older and more experienced artist's mentorship and support of his young protegée. Degas was ten years older than Cassatt and already an established figure in the Parisian art world when she exhibited her first painting there, and so there has been an understandable tendency to view their interaction as a kind of one-way street and to emphasize the ways in which Degas influenced her art and facilitated her acceptance into the company of "serious" (i.e., "male") painters. The aim of this show, however, is to present a more nuanced picture of their relationship and to bring to greater prominence her active role in it. That is not very easy to do, though, because their direct correspondence has been lost, and everything we know about what they truly thought of one another and precisely what role each played in the other's life has come down to us only as mediated by third parties. That means that the most reliable way of assessing their relationship is by putting their works face-to-face or head-to-head and taking a very close look at what each was doing at the time of their closest connection, which, as it happens, neatly coincides with the years of the Impressionist exhibitions: it was in 1874 when Degas saw Cassatt's painting "Ida" at the Salon and made his famous comment about her being someone "who feels like I do," and although they remained friends until Degas died in 1917, the intensity of their friendship and artistic connection waned considerably after 1886, the year of the last Impressionist show.Those years are the focus of the five scholarly essays in the catalogue. Kimberley A. Jones, Associate Curator of French Paintings at the National Gallery, who curated the exhibition and edited the volume, contributes a close examination of Degas's paintings of Cassatt, which range between pure portraiture and obvious genre (she posed for many more of them than was acknowledged at the time) and comes to an honest and objective conclusion that I think is in fact the net result of the entire exhibition and the only possible answer to the questions it poses: How active a part did the one play in the other's artistic process? To what extent was he guided by her or she by him?--"So much is impossible to pin down" (97). It really is impossible to say; their relationship is essentially nothing more than a matrix of suggestive ambiguities. One thing we can say for sure, though, is that they were the ultimate "artistic sparring partners," in the very nice formulation of Amanda Zehnder, who writes a general overview of the forty years of their relationship and with that phrase captures the mixture of cooperation and competition that made their artistic interaction so lively. There is also a very detailed essay on the "intersections and innovations" in their printmaking practices, in which they were perhaps most closely allied and which presents Cassatt as an experimenter at least as risk-taking as Degas and equally obsessive in exploiting the medium itself as the ultimate muse; another essay presents the results of x-radiography to illustrate the way Degas suggested that Cassatt change the composition of "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair" (1878; the jacket illustration is a detail); and another chronicles the way Cassatt used her connections to wealthy American families to promote Degas's work in this country and, in so doing, subtly promoted her own as well. I found all of these essays interesting and informative; they certainly go beyond the format of "how Degas influenced Cassatt" that is so familiar in discussions of the two artists. All the writers are senior authorities in their fields, and the essays are well and clearly written. It is obvious that the project of redressing what has been perceived to be an imbalance could have resulted in an imbalance the other way around and an overemphasis on Cassatt's role, but that has not happened; the scholarship is objective and sober, and although the writers are clearly aware of the gendered nature of perception and experience, they have avoided the amateur psychologizing that sometimes dogs the comparisons of male and female artists.The catalogue has about seventy plates of the exhibition items in the various media in which they worked, more of Degas than of Cassatt, because it reproduces Degas's series of prints of Cassatt at the Louvre, in the Paintings Gallery and the Etruscan Gallery. The prints are usually presented half-page and other works full-page, and the reproductions are excellent. The plates are not individually commented on, but are referenced throughout the essays, which themselves are supported by an additional sixty or so well chosen comparison illustrations. The volume is altogether beautifully designed and laid out, with wide margins, well spaced lines, a dozen or so large blow-ups as chapter frontispieces, and a generally uncluttered look. The apparatus includes a brief selected bibliography, an exhibition checklist with the usual curatorial data, and an index of proper names and paintings. The exhibition is about the closest we will get to resolving the issues surrounding that famous artistic relationship for some time to come, and it is fortunate that it has been documented in this beautiful volume, which deserves a place in every Impressionist collection.

What a great catalogue for anyone who wondered what the relationship was between Degas and Cassatt. I saw the show in DC and was thrilled to be able to get the catalogue through Amazon. Thanks.

The text is interesting; however, the quality of the photos of the art is inferior.

Excellent. Gave me all the information I needed.

Arrived in good shape