McNay Museum
October 31, 2019 to February 9, 2020
Image: Mary Cassatt, The Cup of Tea, ca. 1880-81. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, From the Collection of James Stillman, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, 1922 (22.16.17). ©️The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Source: Art Resource, NY
This fall, McNay visitors will have a special opportunity to view Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist masterpiece The Cup of Tea in Mary Cassatt’s Women. Joined by the McNay’s own suite of Cassatt’s well-known and beloved aquatints and other works on paper, The Cup of Tea is on loan exclusively to the McNay from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Cassatt received critical acclaim for The Cup of Tea in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition.
Mary Cassatt’s Women focuses on the artist’s images of the ordinary and often intimate moments from the daily lives of upper-middle class women like herself—as they care for children, ride the public omnibus, or enjoy the ritual of having tea. What makes Cassatt’s work compelling is how she elevates what could be dismissed as mundane subject matter through her masterful approach to color and composition.
