Impressionism · 1893
Mary Cassatt 1844–1926
Art Institute of Chicago · Chicago
Seen from above in the flattened space of a Japanese print, a woman tenderly washes a child's feet — intimacy without sentimentality.
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Chapter 1 of 7
Here is a painting that changed what art was allowed to notice. Mary Cassatt — the only American artist to exhibit with the Paris Impressionists — made this in 1893. She insisted that domestic life deserved the same serious gaze as any history painting.
In this intimate scene now hanging in Chicago, she proved it.
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