Gathering Fruit

c. 1893

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

Printed with black lines on cream-white paper, a woman standing on a ladder propped against a wall hands fruit down to a nude child held by a second woman in this vertical etching. The women wear long-skirted dresses with long, loose sleeves, and their hair is pulled back in buns at the napes of their necks. The ladder, to our left, leans against vines growing up a wall. The woman standing on the ladder leans and looks down in profile at the child to our right. The child sits facing away from us in the other woman’s arms, bare buns squished along one forearm. The child reaches for the fruit, perhaps a cluster of small grapes. The second woman’s face is hidden by the child’s head. An opening in the wall to the right leads back to an open space.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    drypoint and softground etching on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 42.23 × 29.85 cm (16 5/8 × 11 3/4 in.)
    sheet: 45.2 x 32.1 cm (17 13/16 x 12 5/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.2755

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Mathews and Shapiro 1989, no. 15, ii/xi


Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1950

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2 Aug - 15 Oct, 1950.

1951

  • Mary Cassatt and her Parisian friends, Pasadena Art Institute, CA, 1951, no. 45.

1989

  • Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamston, MA, 1989-1990, no. 15-II, repro.

Bibliography

1979

  • Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, no. 157, i/v.

1989

  • Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, no. 15, ii/xi.

Inscriptions

recto: at lower left in graphite in later hand: B.; verso: at upper left in graphite in later hand: 1546

Markings

recto: none; verso: Lessing J. Rosenwald (Lugt 1760b) and National Gallery of Art (Lught 1932d)

Watermarks

none

Wikidata ID

Q64960357


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