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| Mary Cassatt Tea ca. 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Straw Hat ca. 1899 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Reflection ca. 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"In October 1923 Cassatt's housekeeper Mathilde discovered a group of twenty-five old copper plates in the back of a closet. Cassatt, assured by Mathilde, as well as by an American artist-friend and her printer Delâtre, that the plates showed evidence of never having been printed (her own eyesight was too weak to examine them closely), had Delâtre pull six sets of them and sent two sets to New York. She asked Louisine to show them to William Ivins [curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum], to whom she expected to sell a set for $2,000. Ivins recognized at once that the proofs were made from worn-out plates – indeed, the museum already owned earlier and better impressions of them. Louisine tried to break this news gently to Cassatt, suggesting that her friends must have been misled as to the condition of the plates, and tactfully explaining that for the sake of her reputation these prints should not be designated as "new" work. Mary Cassatt stubbornly refused to accept Ivins's judgment, but what was even worse, in her opinion, was that her best friend had taken his side! She was indignant at Louisine's "disloyalty" in supporting Ivins's evaluation, and vented her wrath in a letter to Joseph Durand-Ruel on January 19, 1924: 'Mrs. Havemeyer assures me that all they want is to safeguard my reputation! to prove that I am not a forger! I will never forgive that. I answered that I could take care of my own reputation and that she should take care of hers. Poor woman, she didn't utter a word, make a gesture, nothing that one might have expected. But since she has become a politician, journalist, speaker, she is no longer anything.'"
"Cassatt remained inflexible in her belief in the prints and would not admit to being in the wrong; on the contrary, she continued to defend herself and her collaborators, turning the issue into a matter of principle that extended beyond the prints and became a defense of her artistic integrity. Her outrage only increased with Louisine's efforts to soothe her, until the artist – almost eighty years old – ended their relationship, as she informed Joseph Durand-Ruel on March 1, 1924. 'Now, I wanted to ask you, if you had any intention of borrowing a pastel or painting from Mrs. Havemeyer [for a forthcoming Cassatt exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in New York] not to do so, for I have broken off completely with her.' Louisine was crushed and deeply saddened by the irrational state of her cherished friend. A few years earlier the art dealer René Gimpel had quoted in his diary a recent visitor to Mary Cassatt as saying, 'she's become a viper.' Louisine bore in dignified silence the breakup of a lifelong friendship; she never spoke a word against Cassatt nor held her responsible for her vindictive attitude, fervently hoping it would pass."
The prints seen here are early impressions from Mrs. Havemeyer's collection that did not enter the Met until five years after this controversy, when they were bequeathed as part of her estate in 1929.
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| Mary Cassatt The Mandolin Player ca. 1889 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Map 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Parrot ca. 1891 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Repose ca. 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Baby's Back 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Bonnet 1891 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Hélène of Septeuil ca. 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Mother Berthe holding her Child ca. 1889 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt Nursing ca. 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Mirror ca. 1891 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Mary Cassatt The Stocking 1890 drypoint Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
– quoted passages from The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America by Frances Weitzenhoffer (New York: Abrams, 1986)