User:Ellie pellegrino/The Cup of Tea (Mary Cassatt)

Context & Background Information
According to author Frederick Sweet, “Mary Cassatt herself is more fully understood by virtue of our being given a true picture of the environment in which she lived and worked.” So, to more fully understand Cassatt’s The Cup of Tea, one must understand the conditions in which she produced such a work.

Cassatt was born in the United States in 1844 to parents Robert and Catherine Cassatt. She began her art career at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1861 at the age of seventeen. Cassatt was dissatisfied with her art education and yearned to continue her career abroad. Her father was hesitant at first. He was concerned that it was inappropriate for his daughter of “means and social position” to pursue an artistic career. He eventually gave in, and the Cassatt family ended up following Mary to Paris to live with her.

It is important to take into account the impact of Cassatt’s identity on her work. As an upper class woman in Paris in the late 1800’s she had the financial means to practice as an artist. Her family’s wealth presented her with the opportunity to go to art school and to later take on art as a profession. Regardless of Cassatt’s freedom in this way, her identity as a woman proposed other challenges. According to Griselda Pollock, “for bourgeois women, going into town mingling with crowds of mixed social composition was not only frightening because it became increasingly unfamiliar, but because it was morally dangerous.” Cassatt may not have been able to access the same spaces as her male counterparts for concerns of safety and for her social standing. In addition to it being dangerous for a woman to go out alone in the city to paint, it would not have been socially acceptable for women to insert herself into spaces that did not align with her social status. Knowing this context from Pollock, we are given insight as to why Cassatt chose to paint subjects such as her sister for paintings like The Cup of Tea.

Response to the Painting at the Time
Gustave Geffroy, a French art critic, praised Mary Cassatt’s The Cup of Tea in an 1881 publication of the journal La Justice. He writes: “We prefer above all the woman in the pink dress and bonnet who holds a cup of tea in her gloved hands.” Geffroy goes on to write about how Lydia is “exquisitely Parisian” having been depicted with various nuances in color, texture, and lighting. The variations of pink along with the free-flowing lace display of a sense of playful femininity. He additionally admires how Cassatt uses reflection of light to highlight the clothing Lydia is wearing. Geffroy concludes by explaining how these artistic details come together to create “a delicious work.”

Charles-Albert d’Arnoux–otherwise known as Bertall, a French illustrator–takes a more critical standpoint on Mary Cassatt’s The Cup of Tea in a publication of Paris-Journal in April 1881. He writes how the painting is “badly drawn and badly painted” and how “without color or modeling” this work is “inconsistent both in tone and form.” Rather than considering that Cassatt may have purposefully depicted her subject in such a way, Bertall denotes this style as being a reflection of Cassatt’s lack of talent as an artist. By describing the whole of Cassat’s works as “unrealistic,” Bertall further neglects that this way of painting may have been intentional. In regards to the subject matter of Cassatt’s larger body of works, he writes: “we are not going to try to describe the confusion of women and young ladies in pink, fanning themselves in their chairs.” By using the word “confusion” Bertall is dismissing Cassatt’s female subjects as unintelligent. He further criticizes Cassatt’s female subjects as being uninteresting and unimportant, in defining their purpose to be merely “fanning themselves in their chairs.”

Henry Trianon seems to have a more ambiguous opinion on Mary Cassatt in a journal called Le Constitutionnel on April 24, 1881. He writes: “Mary Cassatt, an English or American woman as her name indicates, also pays tribute to the sketch. Sometimes, however, she achieves an effect, almost a painting…” A seeming lack of knowledge about Cassatt’s identity is indicated in the questioning of her nationality. The way he refers to Cassatt’s finished works as a “sketch” and “almost a painting” indicates that Trianon does not completely approve of her work. However, Trianon is more considerate than other critics in acknowledging Cassatt's desire to “achieve an effect.” Trianon recognizes the loose brush strokes in The Cup of Tea along with the harmonization of the cheerful pinks and blues. He even goes on to say that the pot of flowers sitting behind the subject “adds its brilliant note to the charm of the overall tonality” of the work. The word “charm” indicates the beauty that Trianon sees in this piece and “tonality” appreciates the cohesion of the composition as a whole. So, while Trianon seems to have doubts about Cassatt’s body of works as a whole, this passage from Le Constitutionnel reflects Trianon’s admiration of Cassatt’s intentions for her work The Cup of Tea.

In a short, but sweet comment in the 1883 publication of L’art moderne, Joris-Karl Husymans admires the “smiling woman dressed in pink” who sits in her large chair and holds a “little teacup in her gloved hands” in Mary Cassatt’s The Cup of Tea. Husyman’s response praises this stereotypically feminine scene as well as Cassatt’s use of techniques to accentuate the unique environment. He claims that the gloved hands and little teacup along with the use of pinks and bright colors suggest an idea of “Parisian elegance to the overall tender and peaceful air” of reality.