Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was the most celebrated woman artist of her era and the only American to join the French Impressionist movement. Too often dismissed as a sentimental painter of mothers and children, Cassatt was in fact a bold modernist pioneer and an aesthetically radical painter, pastelist, and printmaker. Her work in every medium is characterized by ceaseless experimentation and change. Smuggling a radical aesthetic program under cover of acceptably “feminine” subject matter, Cassatt produced images of “women’s work” that also testify to the work of the woman who made them. Mary Cassatt at Work delves into the artist’s materials and processes, exploring
the daring, iterative methods she used to give form to her ideas.
Our presenter, Marsha Holm has been a docent with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 1979. In addition to giving tours and lectures in all areas of the museums’ collections, from Africa to the Pacific Islands, from the Americas to Europe, she has served in several administrative capacities, including new and continuing education for FAMSF docents.