Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother [SEP] creator
Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother
Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother is a drypoint print dated "circa" 1889 by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. The example illustrated is in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and is a gift of Samuel Putnam Avery.
The print.
The infant is Cassatt's nephew Joseph Gardner Cassatt III by her brother Gard and sister-in-law Eugenie Carter (Jennie). Cassatt's biographer Nancy M. Mathews dates
as her most original contribution... adding a new chapter to the history of graphic arts...technically, as color prints, they have never been surpassed". In all Cassatt executed just 22 color prints. An example of "Woman Bathing" fetched $218,500 at a Christie's sale in October 2010.
The 1888 "Gardner" print is generally regarded as the earliest dated example of the mother and child images that grew into Cassatt's greatest body of work, approaching a third of her entire "opus". There