Some fifteen years ago, on the occasion of an exhibition in Paris of Miss Cassatt's work a French critic suggested that she was then, perhaps, with the exception of Whistler, "the only artist of an elevated, personal and distinguished talent actually possessed by America." The suggestion no doubt was a rash one, since, as much personal and distinguished work by American artists never leaves this country, the data for comparison must be lacking to a French critic; but it is certainly true that, like Whistler, Miss Cassatt early struck an individual note, looked at life with her own eyes, and respected her intellectual instrument sufficiently to master it to the extent, at least, of creating a style for herself. Born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she studied first at the Philadelphia Academy, and later traveled through Spain, Italy, and Holland in search of artistic knowledge and direction. In France she came to know the group of painters including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas, and especially influenced by the work of Degas, she turned to him for the counsel she needed, receiving it in generous measure. It was a fortunate choice, the most fortunate possible, if she wished to combine in her art the detached observation characteristic in general of the Impressionist school with a passionate pursuit of all the subtlety, eloquence and precision possible to pure line. The fruit of his influence is to be found in the technical excellence of her representations of life, the firmness and candor of her drawing, her competent management of planes and surfaces, and the audacity with which she attacks difficult problems of color and tone. The extreme gravity of her method is the natural result of working under a master whose intensity and austerity in the pursuit of artistic truth are perhaps unequaled in the history of modern art.

Her choice of subject is not, however, the inspiration of any mind other than her own. She has taken for the special field in which to exercise her vigorous talent that provided by the various phases of the maternal relation. Her wholesome young mothers with their animated children, comely and strong, unite the charm of great expressiveness with that of profoundly scientific execution. The attentive student of art is well aware how easily the former quality unsupported by the latter may degenerate into the cloying exhibition of sentiment, and is equally aware of the sterility of the latter practised for itself alone. With expressiveness for her goal and the means of rendering technical problems for her preoccupation, Miss Cassatt has arrived at hard-earned triumphs of accomplishment. One has only to turn from one of her recently exhibited pictures to another painted ten or twelve years ago to appreciate the length of the way she has come. The earlier painting, an oil color, is of a woman in a striped purple, white, and green gown, holding a half-naked child, who is engaged in bathing its own feet, with the absorbed expression on its face common to children occupied with such responsible tasks. The bricky flesh tints of the faces and hands, and the greenish half-tones of the square little body are too highly emphasized, but a keen perception of facts of surface and construction is obvious in the well-defined planes of the child's anatomy, in the foreshortened, thin little arm pressing firmly on the woman's knee and in the stout little legs, hard and round and simply modeled. There is plenty of truth in the picture, but in spite of an almost effective effort toward harmony of color, it lacks what the critics call "totality of effect." The annotation of the various phenomena is too explicit, the values are not finely related, and there is little suggestion of atmosphere.

In the later picture this crudity is replaced by a beautiful fluent handling and the mastery of tone. The subject is again a woman and child, the latter just out of its bath, its flesh bright and glowing, its limbs instinct with life and ready to spring with uncontrollable vivacity. The modeling of the figures is as elusive as it is sure, and in the warm, golden air by which they seem to be enveloped, the well-understood forms lose all suggestion of the hardness and dryness conspicuous in the early work. Another recent painting of a kindred subject, Le lever de bÉbÉ, shows the same synthesis of detail, the same warmth and richness of tone, the same free and learned use of line. Obviously, Miss Cassatt has come into the full possession of her art and is no longer constrained by the struggle, sharp and hard as it must have been, with her exacting method—a method that has not at any time permitted the sacrifice of truth to charm. Since art is both truth and charm, record and poetry, there is a great satisfaction in watching the flowering of a positive talent, after the inevitable stages of literalism are passed, into the beauty of intelligent generalization. In all the later work there is the important element of ease, a certain graciousness of style, that enhances to a very great degree the beauty of the serious, dignified canvases. And from the beginning these have shown the admirable qualities of serenity and poise. There is no superficiality or pettiness about these homely women with their deep chests and calm faces, peacefully occupying themselves with their sound, agreeable children. The air of health, of fresh and normal vigor, is the characteristic of the chosen type, and lends a suggestion of the Hellenic spirit to the modern physiognomies.

If, however, in her technique and in the feeling of quietness she conveys, Miss Cassatt recalls the classic tradition, she is intensely modern in her choice of natural, unhackneyed gesture, and faces in which individuality is strongly marked and from which conventional beauty is absent. Occasionally, as in the picture shown at Philadelphia in 1904, and in the fine painting owned by Sir William C. Van Horne, we have a face charming in itself and modeled in a way to bring out its refinement, but in the greater number of instances the rather heavy and imperfect features of our average humanity are reproduced without compromise, with even a certain sense of triumph in the beautiful statement of sufficiently ugly facts and freedom from a fixed ideal.

Nothing, for example, could be less in the line of academic beauty than the quiet bonneted woman in the opera-box shown at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1907. She has her opera-glass to her eyes and her pleasant refined profile is cut sharply against the light balustrade of the balcony. Other figures in adjoining boxes are mere patches of color and of light and shade, telling, nevertheless, as personalities so acutely are the individual values perceived and discriminated. The color is personal and interesting, the difficult perspective of the curving line of boxes is mastered with amazing skill; the fidelity of the drawing to the forms and aspects of things seen gives expression to even the inanimate objects recorded—and to painters who have tried it we recommend the subtlety of that simply modeled cheek! The whole produces the impression of solid reality and quick life and we get from it the kind of pleasure communicated not by the imitation but by the evocation of living truth. We note things that have significance for us for the first time—the fineness of the hair under the dark bonnet, the pressure of the body's weight on the arm supported by the railing, the relaxation of the arm holding the fan, and very clever painting by artists of less passionate sincerity takes on a meretricious look in contrast with this closeness of interpretation.

This, perhaps, is the chief distinction of Miss Cassatt's art—closeness of interpretation united to the Impressionist's care for the transitory aspect of things. She follows the track of an outline as sensitively if not as obviously as Ingres, and she exacts from line as much as it is capable of giving without interference with the expressiveness of the whole mass. She takes account of details with an unerring sense for their appropriateness. She selects without forcing the note of exclusion, and she thus becomes an artist of sufficiently general appeal to be understood at once. She is not merely intelligent, but intelligible; her art has no cryptic side. It is only the initiated frequenter of galleries who will pause to reflect how tremendously it costs to be so clear and plain.

In her etchings and drawings Miss Cassatt early arrived at freedom of handling. The more responsive medium gave her an opportunity to produce delightful studies of domestic life while she was still far from having attained an easy control of pigment and brush. Her dry-points, pulled under her own direction and enriched with flat tints of color, are interesting and expressive, rich in line and large and full in modeling. The color was not, however, wholly an improving experiment. Under the friendly influence of time it may become an element of beauty, since in no case is it either commonplace or crude, but in its newness it lacks something of both delicacy and depth. The later etchings without color are more nearly completely satisfying. The three charming interpretations of children recently sent over to this country are full of freshness and life, and are admirable examples of the brilliant use of pure line. The attitude of the child in the etching reproduced here is, indeed, quite an extraordinary feat of richness of expression with economy of means. The heavy little head sagging against the tense arm, the small, childish neck and thin shoulder are insisted upon just sufficiently to render the mood of light weariness, and the little face, full of individuality, is tenderly observed and modeled with feeling. The psychological bent of the artist, her interest in the portrayal of mental and moral qualities, is nowhere more clearly revealed than in her drawings of children. She has never been content to reproduce merely the physical plasticity and delicacy of infancy, but has shown in her joyous babies and dreamy little girls at least the potentiality of strong wills and clear minds. Great diversity of character and temperament are displayed in the expressive curves of the plump young faces, and the eyes, in particular, questioning, exultant, wondering, reflective or merry, betray a penetrating and subtle insight into the dawning personality under observation.

One of her earliest works recently has been added to the Wilstach collection in Philadelphia. It shows a man and two women on a balcony. The straight line of the balcony railing stretches across the foreground without any modification of its rigid linear effect. The man's figure is in shadow, barely perceptible as to detail, yet indicated without uncertainty of drawing or vagueness of any kind, a solid figure the "tactile values" of which are clearly recognized. One of the women is bending over the railing in a half-shadow while the other lifts her face toward the man in an attitude that makes exacting requirements of the artist's knowledge of foreshortening. The whole is duskily brilliant in color, full of the sense of form, simple, dignified, sturdy, opulent. It shows that Miss Cassatt held at the beginning of her career as now, valuable ideals of competency and lucidity in the interpretation of life.