The Great Women Artists
Katy Hessel
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Mary Morton on Mary Cassatt
Today on the GWA podcast is curator Mary Morton on the extraordinary painter Mary Cassatt! Mary Morton is curator and head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she has organised exhibitions on the Impressionist movement, to shows centring on Corot, Cézanne and Gaugin. She has published extensively and in 2018 was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by France's Ministry of Culture. But the reason we are speaking with her today is because this November she will publish “Cassatt Reconsidered”, which looks at the life and work of the revolutionary artist Mary Cassatt, and how she was mishandled by the Parisian art establishment – and since by art historians who have narrowed her public perception to being a sentimental artist who only ever depicted one subject. While celebrated for her pictures of mothers and children, Cassatt was also so much more. Born in Philadelphia in 1844, aged 21 Cassatt moved to Paris to pursue her artistic career, before being invited to join the Impressionists. Working at a time when the world was changing at drastic speed, Cassatt was also hugely independent, business savvy and fiercely ambitious. Over a 50 year career she produced some 600 oil and pastel paintings and 240 prints, her output ranging from an exploration of Japanese printmaking to a monumental feminist mural for the 1893 World's Exposition in Chicago. As Morton writes, her work was "distinguished by an intimacy and empathy of vision and psychological and emotional insight" and "disturbed conventional ideas of femininity, childhood and maternity" – and I can't wait to find out more. "Cassatt Reconsidered" is published 24 November 2026: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9798887120508/cassatt-reconsidered/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Tory Pope Co-produced with Molly Lafosse Music by Ben Wetherfield
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