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Mary Cassatt, \u201cReine Lefebvre and Margot,\u201d 1902, pastel on paper mounted on canvas, The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles | Photo: Courtesy SBMA<\/p>\nMary Cassatt, \u201cReine Lefebvre and Margot,\u201d 1902, pastel on paper mounted on canvas, The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles | Photo: Courtesy SBMA<\/p>\n
There is a short list, an expanding one, of art stars living in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art\u2019s galleries and vaults. These are officially celebrated figures in art history whose works are proudly housed in the SBMA permanent collection. The list includes a handful of canvases by his impressionist holiness, Claude Monet \u2014 which became useful as part of last year\u2019s blockbuster show.<\/p>\n
Another artist of note, albeit lesser known in the impressionist pantheon, is American-in-Paris painter Mary Cassatt, a rare woman in the mostly male impressionist pack, whose lyrical canvases have often graced the museum\u2019s walls, and are always a good friend to our visiting eyeballs.<\/p>\n
That said, the current exhibition doesn\u2019t deal with the more high-profile paintings, but a selection of her pastel and printworks \u2014 which she made as part of her artistic process and the fruits of which stand up on their own as artworks worthy of attention.<\/p>\n
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Berthe Morisot, French, 1841-1895, \u201cPortrait of Marthe Givaudan,\u201d 1892, pastel on canvas, Gift of Dwight and Winifred Vedder | Photo: Courtesy SBMA<\/p>\n
The exhibition is well-timed, at a time when the Cassatt\u2019s centennial is giving rise to new appreciation and reappraisal through a major show at Chicago\u2019s Art Institute. SBMA\u2019s Cassatt exhibition, curated by James Glisson and fitting in one small gallery, is a much humbler presentation, but wins points for the uniqueness of its conceptual approach.<\/p>\n
One centerpiece in the show hangs on the back wall, the mother-and-child pastel \u201cReine Lefebvre and Margot,\u201d but another centerpiece is the similar but fainter \u201cSimone in a White Bonnet.\u201d It is a fine example of \u201ccounterproof,\u201d in which a sheet of paper is pressed over a pastel, creating a reverse image with a paler, more restrained and even ghostly palette.<\/p>\n
Fellow female impressionist and longtime friend and ally Berthe Morisot is represented by another pastel of a girl, \u201cPortrait of Marthe Girardon.\u201d The artist creates the image in a style unconcerned with meticulous finish or detail \u2014 impressionism in action, and non-action.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, examples of Cassatt\u2019s use of drypoint \u2014 created by scratching a needle on copperplates to generate lines, like drawing but more precise \u2014 is necessarily more sharply drawn, as seen in \u201cLooking into a Hand Mirror,\u201d another innocent image of a girl. Cassatt\u2019s \u201cOn the Balcony\u201d was created, conversely, with the soft-ground etching technique \u2014 a metal plate is coated with a waxy material, resulting in a more atmospheric effect.<\/p>\n
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Mary Cassatt, \u201cSimone in a White Bonnet Seated with Clasped Hands (No.1),\u201dc. 1905-1915, pastel counterproof on Japan paper, Gift of Michael C. Linn Family Foundation | Photo: Courtesy SBMA<\/p>\n
Other artists and \u201cfriends\u201d in the general impressionist circle include James McNeil Whistler, whose work here ranges from the murky etching \u201cNocturne-Furnace\u201d to the more realist portraiture of \u201cBecquel,\u201d and the miniature etching \u201cThe Wine Glass,\u201d by far the wee-est art in the room.<\/p>\n
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is seen via his \u201caction painting\u201d lithograph at the horse races, \u201cThe Jockey.\u201d Paul Cezanne\u2019s color lithograph \u201cThe Large Bathers,\u201d based on his well-known painting \u201cBathers at Rest,\u201d illustrates the practice of using lithographs to complement the art market in 19th-century France.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Art in full, living color is not the point of the exhibition, but there are two points of reference: Cassatt\u2019s \u201cReine Lefebvre and Margot\u201d and Paul-Albert Besnard\u2019s relatively vivid \u201cWoman with Red Hair,\u201d which plays with mirror imagery in its double-portrait. Besnard, though a lesser-known figure of the Parisian scene, shared with Cassatt an interest in exploring print medium, as an expressive end unto itself and as a means of thinking about and marking finished art, in process and in progress.<\/p>\n
That may be the underlying message of the medium focus at SBMA, which also plays a role in casting a larger spotlight on Cassatt in the fine art world. We\u2019ll look at her SBMA-owned paintings with greater respect and deeper understanding going forward.<\/p>\n
Cassatt & Friends shows at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1130 State St.) through January 3, 2027. See sbma.net.<\/p>\n
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