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 colored print. The scene is printed with areas of mostly flat color in shades of vivid green, earthy browns, and pastel pinks and blue. The women and child have peachy-toned skin and brown hair. Both women wear long, floral-patterned 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 growing up the brown wall. The woman standing on the ladder wears a powder-blue dress over an apricot-orange and white patterned kerchief around 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 rose 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. The sky above is a strip of topaz blue along the top edge of the print.

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 x 29.8 cm (16 9/16 x 11 3/4 in.)
    sheet: 47.9 x 39 cm (18 7/8 x 15 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.2757

  • Catalogue Raisonné

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

Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1950

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1950.

1951

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

1958

  • Color Etchings and Aquatints by Mary Cassatt, Ogunquit Museum, ME, 1958.

1963

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

1964

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt, organized by the Smithsonian Travelling Exhibition Service and circulated to 10 venues (Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY; Norton Gallery & School of Art, Palm Beach, FL; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; Charles & Emma Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH; Columbus Gallery of Fine Art, Columbus, OH; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; and A.D. White Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY), 1964-1965.

1967

  • Miss Mary Cassatt: Paintings and Graphic Arts, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, 1967.

1978

  • Mary Cassatt: Pastels and Color Prints, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, DC, 1978, no. 48.

1990

  • Gardens on Paper: Prints and Drawings, 1200-1900, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1990, no. 96, repro.

1998

  • Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998-1999, no. 69, as The Kitchen Garden (Le Potager) (shown only in Chicago and Boston).

2015

  • The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, 2015-2016 (only shown in Philadelphia).

Bibliography

1979

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

1989

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

1990

  • Clayton, Virginia Tuttle. Gardens on Paper: Prints and Drawings, 1200-1900. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1990: 96.

1991

  • Gingold, Diane J., and Elizabeth A.C. Weil. The Corporate Patron. New York, 1991: 71, color repro.

1998

  • Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman. Exh. cat. The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998-1999: 94, no. 69, repro.

2015

  • Marley, Anna O., ed., The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement. Exh. cat. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 2015: 207, pl. 74.

Inscriptions

recto: at lower left in graphite in later hand: A [?]; verso: none

Markings

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

Watermarks

shield

Wikidata ID

Q64960362

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