Gathering Fruit

c. 1893

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

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, partially colored print. The scene is printed with areas of mostly flat color in shades of vivid green and pastel peach and pink. The women and child have peachy-toned skin and brown hair. Both 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 the verdant green vines and yellow fruit growing up a wall, which itself is the color of the cream-white paper. The woman standing on the ladder wears a pale, frost-green dress with a white kerchief at her neck. She 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 wears blush pink, and her face is hidden by the child’s head. An opening in the wall to the right leads back to an open space with more greenery.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 42.55 x 29.85 cm (16 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.)
    sheet: 56.67 x 43.02 cm (22 5/16 x 16 15/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.2756

  • Catalogue Raisonné

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


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown, PA; acquired 1943 by the National Gallery of Art

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1945

  • Blair-Lee House, Washington, D.C., 1945-1962.

1963

  • Prints and Drawings by Mary Cassatt, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1963.

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-III, repro.

2011

  • Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The National Art Center, Tokyo, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, 2011, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1979

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

1989

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

2010

  • Jones, Kimberly A. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2010.

Inscriptions

recto: at lower center in graphite in later hand: E-; at lower right in graphite in later hand: 1-; verso: none

Markings

recto: none; verso: Lessing Julius Rosenwald (Lugt 1760b)

Watermarks

Adriaan Rogge [shield]

Wikidata ID

Q64960360


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