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Throughout her career, Cassatt gained great recognition for her prints. This work exemplifies the practice of drypoint etching, a popular printmaking technique among artists during the late-19th and early-20th century. In order to create the image, Cassatt would have drawn directly and irreversibly on a copper plate with a diamond or ruby-pointed stencil or stylus. This process gives the image the appearance of a pencil sketch.
BibliographyPublished in Adelyn Dohme Breeskin’s Mary Cassatt Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Works, page 199
Artist
Mary Cassatt
(American, 1844 - 1926)
Manicure
Datec. 1908
DimensionsSight: 8 3/4 × 6 1/2 in. (22.2 × 16.5 cm)
Object numberN0008.2023
Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Museum Purchase.
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextThis scene was done during the period in which Cassatt was working in both painted media and experimenting with printing and etching. Cassatt was hugely inspired by the 1889 Exposition Universelle and the inclusion of a major exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts, which shifted the trajectory of her artistic output in the 1890s and early 1900s toward the graphic arts.Throughout her career, Cassatt gained great recognition for her prints. This work exemplifies the practice of drypoint etching, a popular printmaking technique among artists during the late-19th and early-20th century. In order to create the image, Cassatt would have drawn directly and irreversibly on a copper plate with a diamond or ruby-pointed stencil or stylus. This process gives the image the appearance of a pencil sketch.
BibliographyPublished in Adelyn Dohme Breeskin’s Mary Cassatt Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Works, page 199
On View
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