The Honolulu Museum of Art
June 21-Oct. 12. 2025
The Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) showcases the only American included among French Impressionists in “Mary Cassatt at Work,” on view June 21-Oct. 12. The exhibition invites visitors on a captivating journey through Cassatt’s six-decade career with 30 paintings, pastels and prints along with the famed artist’s personal correspondence that offer insight into her experiences making a living through art. A visually radical artist, she helped shape the Impressionist movement and transformed the course of modern art, using materials and processes that pushed the creative boundaries of her era.
“Mary Cassatt at Work” explores the artist’s activity across media, revealing the daring methods she used to give form to her ideas.
Among the objects on view in the exhibition are eight works from HoMA’s collection. Featuring prints, pastels and oils, HoMA’s collection underscores her enduring commitment to innovation. HoMA’s relationship with Cassatt dates to the Museum’s founding. In addition to eight works from HoMA’s collection, the exhibition includes 21 objects on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and one from a private collection.
“Mary Cassatt has been a part of the museum since it opened in 1927,” said HoMA director and CEO Halona Norton-Westbrook. “Just as the Honolulu Museum of Art shares the best of Hawai‘i’s art with the world, for almost 100 years it has also been bringing the world to Hawai‘i. It is a wonderful parallel to celebrate the work of a groundbreaking female artist at a museum that was founded by an equally forward-thinking woman.”
Cassatt’s “The Banjo Lesson” (1893) was among the core group of works gifted to the museum by founder Anna Rice Cooke. The drypoint, considered modern for that era, reflects the popularity of banjo playing among middle- and upper-class women of that time. In “The Child’s Caress,” (1891) a tender moment between mother and child highlights the female role of nurturer and primary caretaker.
Cassatt is best known for her depictions of women and children. “Mary Cassatt at Work” offers a serious window into the social, intellectual, domestic and working lives of women and delves into issues of class, rarely discussed when examining Cassatt’s work. The exhibition also explores Cassatt’s role in bringing to the forefront the “invisible work” of women, making it a perceptible, serious object of study. Her work highlights roles traditionally assigned to women, including caregiving, nursing, social labor and performing music. Cassatt meticulously presents these roles through intimate marks of her brush, etching needle, pastel stick and fingertips.
The show also illustrates Cassatt’s exceptional draftsmanship and her innovative printmaking. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, Cassatt drew from the colors and patterns she saw in Japanese art and used Western technique to pioneer a new method of printing. HoMA's exceptional collection of Japanese prints—one of the largest outside of Japan—offers a rare glimpse into the cross-cultural dialogue that inspired Cassatt's groundbreaking work in color printmaking.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue that will be available in the HoMA Shop.
Exhibition organization
“Mary Cassatt at Work” is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The organizing curators are Jennifer Thompson, Gloria and Jack Drosdick curator of European painting and sculpture and curator of the John G. Johnson collection; and Laurel Garber, Park Family associate curator of prints and drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The curators for the Honolulu Museum of Art’s presentation are Halona Norton-Westbrook, director and CEO, and Alejandra Rojas Silva, works on paper, curator of European and American art.
Major support for “Mary Cassatt at Work” is provided by Prince Waikiki.
About Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was among the leading figures of the French Impressionist movement and the most celebrated woman artist of her time. Born in Pittsburgh to a well-to-do family, she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts when she was just 15. In 1866, chaperoned by her mother, she moved to Paris to study privately. Edgar Degas, with whom she became close friends, invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1879, marking a turning point for Cassatt. She contributed to four of the Impressionists’ famed group exhibitions and became an ambassador for the movement in the United States. Cassatt maintained a professional practice, exhibiting and selling her works. Over the course of her career, she produced approximately 380 pastels, 320 paintings and 215 prints. She painted her final pictures in 1915 and showed a group of them at an exhibition in New York supporting women’s suffrage, a cause she supported in her later years. She was forced to stop painting as she went progressively blind.
IMAGES
Driving, 1881. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, W1921-1-1
Woman in a Loge, 1879. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright, 1978.
The Letter, 1890-1891. Color drypoint and aquatint on laid paper, third state of three. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Bequest of Aaron E. Carpenter, 1970
Maternal Caress, 1896. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Bequest of Aaron E. Carpenter, 1970.
The Child’s Caress, c. 1891. Oil on canvas. Honolulu Museum of Art: Gift in memory of Wilhelmina Tenney by a group of her friends, 1953 (1845.1)
Jeune Fille au Corsage Rose Clair (Young Woman with Auburn Hair in a Pink Blouse),1895. Pastel on paper. Honolulu Museum of Art: Bequest of Kathryn and Arthur Murray, 1997 (26337)
Petite Fille Assise Dans une Bergère Jaune (Young Girl Seated in a Yellow Armchair), c. 1902. Pastel on paper. Honolulu Museum of Art: Bequest of Kathryn and Arthur Murry (26336).
The Banjo Lesson, c. 1893. Drypoint. Honolulu Museum of Art: Gift of Anna Rice Cooke, 1927 (5200).
