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Lecture—Mary Cassatt: The Woman in the Country
Join SLAM and Nancy Mowll Mathews—the Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator, emerita at Williams College Museum of Art—to explore Cassatt’s choices of models, costumes, poses and settings for the works inspired by her own country living and the messages she wanted to convey about “the Land.”
Mary Cassatt, whose family had numerous country homes over the years, acquired her own, the Château de Beaufresne, at the age of 50. In this, she matched her two brothers who built country mansions outside of Philadelphia. For Cassatt, “the country” was a lifestyle, and in her art, she created the woman who embraced it. Mathews will explore Cassatt’s choices of models, costumes, poses, and settings for the works inspired by her own country living and the messages she wanted to convey about the Land.
About Nancy Mowll Mathews
Nancy Mowll Mathews began her studies of Mary Cassatt and French and American Impressionism with her doctoral dissertation for the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Of the more than 15 books and exhibitions she has produced on this subject, the best known are Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters, Cassatt: The Color Prints and Mary Cassatt: A Life. Most recently, she curated and cowrote the catalogue for Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist in Paris for the Jacquemart-André Museum. She is the emerita Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of 19th and 20th Century Art at the Williams College Museum of Art and taught in the Williams College art department and graduate program. In addition to her work on Cassatt, she is the coauthor of the Prendergast catalogue raisonné, and numerous other books on Maurice and Charles Prendergast, Paul Gauguin, and the relationship between art and early film.
Ticket information
When available, tickets can be reserved in person or through MetroTix. All tickets reserved through MetroTix incur a service charge; the service charge is waived for tickets reserved at the Museum.
