Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Mary Cassatt's original pastel boxes on display


The National Gallery of Art has just begun to display some of  Mary Cassatt's original pastel boxes in conjunction with the exhibition Degas/Cassatt.

"Presumably in 1920, Cassatt gave these boxes of pastels to ten-year-old Electra Webb Bostwick, the granddaughter of Louisine Havemeyer, an art collector and dear friend of the artist. Years later, Bostwick recalled, "Not realizing the value of the pastels I wasted lots of them on playing and swapping them with my friends."
Donated to the Shelburne Craft School in Vermont in the early 1940s, these boxes were brought to the attention of the Gallery by conservators at the Shelburne Museum. As a result, the pastel boxes have recently been acquired by the Gallery's Art Materials Collection and Study Center, a permanent home for artists' materials, technical information, and trade literature. Having Mary Cassatt's actual art supplies will enable Gallery conservators and art historians to further their analysis and understanding of the artist's process, and of the materials themselves."
NGA

They will be on display till October 5th.

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