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| Mary Cassatt Denise at her Dressing Table c. 1908-09 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Young Girl at a Window 1883-84 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
Miss Cassatt seemed inclined to talk and continued: "I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! The concentration it requires, to compose your picture, the difficulty of posing the models, of choosing the color scheme, of expressing the sentiment and telling your story! The trying and trying again and again and oh, the failures, when you have to begin all over again! The long months spent on effort after effort, making sketch after sketch. Oh, my dear! No one but those who have painted a picture know what it costs in time and strength!"
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| Mary Cassatt The Loge c. 1878-80 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Mary Cassatt The Cup of Tea c. 1880-81 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Woman with a Fan 1878-79 National Gallery (U.S.) |
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| Mary Cassatt Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly 1880 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Ellen Mary Cassatt c. 1899 pastel Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Nurse Reading to Little Girl 1895 pastel Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Woman with a Red Zinnia 1891 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Mary Cassatt Little Girl in a Blue Armchair 1878 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Mary Cassatt Lilacs in a Window c. 1880-83 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Mary Cassatt Margot in an Orange Dress 1902 pastel Metropolitan Museum |
"She never allowed her photograph to be taken, and if anyone begged her for a snapshot she would quickly turn so that all the camera caught of her was the outline of her back or, at most, a little bit of profile. The only suggestion of a portrait that I know of her is a small picture that I bought before my marriage. It is in gouache and represents a lady in a bonnet with her gloved hands lying upon her lap. Miss Cassatt told me she was her own model for that picture and did it looking at herself in a mirror. The hands are very characteristic, and she wore the same bonnet when she posed for one of Degas's Modistes."
- from Sixteen to Sixty, the memoirs of Louisine W. Havemeyer published in 1930. Mrs. Havemeyer was befriended as a teenager studying art in Paris in the 1870s by her fellow American, Mary Cassatt, ten years older and already established as a painter. They remained lifelong friends. The memoir reveals to what a great extent the famous Havemeyer art collection was shaped both directly and indirectly by the hand of Mary Cassatt.
With the exception of the painting below, the Cassatt works brought together here never belonged to Mrs. Havemeyer. She was not an extensive collector of her friend's work. The Cassatt pastels and paintings at the National Gallery in Washington DC and at the Metropolitan Museum were deposited by other donors.
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| Mary Cassatt Self-portrait 1878 Metropolitan Museum Acquired by Louisine Elder (later Havemeyer) in 1879 |
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| Edgar Degas At the Milliner's 1862 pastel Metropolitan Museum Gift of Louisine Havemeyer |