Art pioneer: Impressionist Cassatt's prints see light of day

Cassatt made 17 versions of her landmark color print "The Bath" before printing the final version, or edition. Click to see various stages of the work (images courtesy Marc Rosen Fine Art)

In this story: Unconventional life Passion for printmaking Bittersweet finale RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Brian Palmer
CNN Correspondent

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Twenty years ago, a French art collector showed Marc Rosen a personal collection of prints and drawings that American Impressionist Mary Cassatt had kept in her Paris studio.

Rosen, an art expert and collector, gasped in awe when he saw them.

After two decades of negotiation, Rosen got permission to exhibit and sell the collection -- which has never been seen by the public -- in the United States.

ARTIST'S GALLERY Cassatt's cutting-edge works     GALLERY: 'The Bath' Examples of her printmaking process    VIDEO CNN exclusive: Correspondent Brian Palmer examines the artistry of Impressionist Mary Cassatt Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     AUDIO Collector Marc Rosen on Cassatt's technique WAV sound Gallery owner Warren Adelson on her influence WAV sound National Gallery of Art curator Deborah Chotner on Cassatt's French connections WAV sound

Of the 204 prints and drawings discovered, more than 100 are on display at New York's Adelson Gallery, and 50 are at the Meredith Long Gallery in Houston, Texas, from Friday through December 29 in "From the Artist's Studio: Unknown Prints and Drawings by Mary Cassatt." Adelson also has the remaining works. Individual prices range from about $5,000 to just over $500,000.

"We've been blessed with this opportunity to bring all this material together before the public so they can be appreciated and fully enjoyed and documented before they're dispersed," said Rosen, who headed Sotheby's Print Department and was its senior expert for Impressionist and modern art before becoming a private art dealer.

Gallery owner Warren Adelson said he's thrilled to be involved with the exhibit.

"It comes at a moment in the art market when there's been particular attention paid to certain American artists, Mary Cassatt being one of them," he said. "Cassatt, like John Singer Sargent, has gotten tremendous attention critically and in the museum world."

Born in 1844 to a well-to-do Pennsylvania family, Cassatt traded a conventional 19th-century existence for an unconventional life as an artist, settling in Paris in 1874.

She was the only American -- and the only woman -- invited by the French Impressionists to exhibit with them.

"She was extremely popular in France," said Barbara Stern Shapiro of Boston's Museum of Fine Art. "She was a great friend to people like Pissarro and Degas -- and Monet knew her well. And these were, of course, your main stars of Impressionism."

"In terms of American painters, she would rank as one of our greatest painters of the period," Adelson said. "I think she is a great artist. Beyond that, she certainly stands on a par with the French painters of the period as well."

This largely unknown color print of "The Fitting," the sixth of seven versions, is among the experimental works by Cassatt going on exhibit for the first time

Cassatt championed Impressionism in the United States, and promoted a woman's right to vote.

"She would probably be wildly annoyed to hear herself be called a feminist," Shapiro said, "but you know, vocabulary has changed, and, you know, in her day, she was very supportive of women's rights."

Known in the United States primarily for her painting, Cassatt pioneered Impressionist printmaking, after being inspired by the Japanese woodblock prints she saw at a Paris exhibition. It became her passion.

In a letter to artist Berthe Morisot, she wrote: "We could go to see the Japanese prints at the Beaux-Arts. … You couldn't dream of anything more beautiful. I dream of it and don't think of anything else but color on copper."

In the early 1900s, Cassatt sold her "studio collection" -- personal works she kept for sentimental or archival reasons -- to art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who had promoted pioneering modernists such as Picasso.

Vollard held on to them until his death prior to World War II. His heirs sold them to the French collector, who eventually showed them to Rosen and Susan Pinsky, who would become Rosen's wife.

Among the highlights of the collection is the "Set of Ten," a series of prints depicting middle-class women in everyday situations. The drypoint and aquatint color prints were made using an etching process that can produce several different tones.

In the seventh version of "The Fitting," Cassatt printed the patterned back wall in a dramatic blue, while toning down her coloration of the seamstress

Some of the works are finished, but most are earlier versions of known Cassatt pieces. The first in the sequence of 10 works is "The Bath," which went through 17 stages of development while Cassatt experimented with technique and color.

"In the midst of her wonderful oils and pastels, it was easy to overlook her prints," Adelson said, noting that the exhibit helps correct that slight.

A pioneering artist, Cassatt is best remembered for capturing grace and intimacy in ordinary moments -- a woman bathing a child, or a mother giving her child a tender kiss.

For Rosen, being able to exhibit these works, finally, feels bittersweet.

"It's both exciting and a little frightening," he said, "because I've known this always as a collection that was something in the future, and now it's present, and soon it will be past, because these things will be in other people's hands."

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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Mary Cassatt
National Gallery of Art - Mary Cassatt -- Selected Color Prints
WebMuseum: Mary Cassatt
Adelson Galleries - New York City - American Impressionist Paintings
Meredith Long and Company - Art Gallery
WebMuseum: John Singer Sargent
Winslow Homer on the Internet

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