Museums and Collections

Mary Cassatt’s work is distributed across collections with different strengths. A museum may hold a major oil painting, several pastels, preparatory drawings or particular impressions of prints also represented elsewhere. Looking for an exact work and its material is more useful than searching only for a familiar title.

Collection ownership and current display are separate questions. The records linked below identify particular objects and their institutional homes; a painting can be on loan, and a work on paper can be represented in a collection without being in a gallery at the time of a visit. An accession number provides a reliable way to follow the same object when titles vary.

The range matters for understanding the artist. A large oil, a small colour impression and a pastel on a mounted sheet offer different encounters with scale, surface and detail. The collections bring those differences into view, while their acquisition credits reveal several routes from private ownership into public institutions.

Washington: oils with different collecting histories

The National Gallery of Art owns Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, the 1878 oil, accession 1983.1.18. Its Paul Mellon collection credit distinguishes it from other Cassatt paintings in the same museum. The broad blue furniture and small reclining figure make it a useful work through which to examine the relationship between bodies and interiors. ^[1]

The Boating Party, dated 1893–94, belongs to the Chester Dale Collection, accession 1963.10.94. The Loge, dated about 1878–80 in the current record, is another Dale work, accession 1963.10.96. Their shared donor history does not make their dates, dimensions or exhibition histories interchangeable. ^{[10] [11]}

The museum’s print collection supplies another kind of evidence. Its Omnibus group includes a preparatory sheet, proofs and a final impression, allowing changes in a design to be examined across physical objects. Showing both sides of the drawing creates an extra view, rather than another independent sheet. This is a collection strength quite different from owning one famous painting. ^[12]

Together, the holdings offer questions about space, spectatorship and making. They also demonstrate why an institution’s Cassatt collection should not be described as one bequest or one medium. The source records attached to each work retain those distinctions.

New York: a range of materials at the Met

The Metropolitan Museum’s Portrait of the Artist, accession 1975.319.1, is watercolour and gouache on layered paper, dated 1878. Its 1975 Edith Proskauer bequest credit is different from its early private ownership. Calling every Cassatt work in the museum a Havemeyer bequest would erase that history. ^[13]

Young Mother Sewing, the 1900 oil, did enter through the 1929 Havemeyer bequest, accession 29.100.48. The material and date distinguish it from a similarly intimate pastel, even before the figures’ actions are examined. The current record also identifies unrelated models, separating the museum’s account of the sitters from a family relationship suggested by the title. ^[14]

Nurse Reading to a Little Girl, accession 62.72, is the 1895 pastel on wove paper mounted on canvas. It was given by Mrs. Hope Williams Read in 1962. It is separate from the Met’s other Nurse and Child, accession 60.181, and from Mother Playing with Child, accession 22.16.23. Similar subjects do not merge their support descriptions or donor histories. ^[2]

These works make New York useful for comparing material as well as subject. A pale garment can be built with watercolour and gouache, pastel strokes or oil paint. The record’s medium line tells us which questions to ask before a visual resemblance is turned into a technical claim.

Chicago and Boston: distinct familiar paintings

The Art Institute of Chicago owns The Child’s Bath, the oil dated 1893, accession 1910.2. The museum’s record provides its particular history and interpretation. Numerical dimensions are omitted here because current and older measurements have not been reconciled on a clearly established basis. The painting remains precisely identifiable without choosing between those figures. ^[15]

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts owns In the Loge, the oil of 1878, accession 10.35, acquired through the Hayden Fund. It is the composition with a woman using opera glasses and a distant male observer. It should be distinguished from the National Gallery’s two-figure The Loge and other theatre images in pastel or oil. ^[16]

This is a practical example of why a title search can be insufficient. Theatre, bathing and motherhood recur across the artist’s work, and historical catalogues sometimes use variant names. The image, medium, date and accession together provide a more dependable identification than one phrase alone.

Detroit and Los Angeles: other donor routes

Detroit Institute of Arts records In the Garden, accession 22.6, as a 1903 or 1904 oil and a 1922 gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman. The garden title does not identify every outdoor Cassatt pastel, nor does the Stillman credit apply to every work with a related setting. ^[17]

Los Angeles County Museum of Art owns the 1880 oil currently titled A Child’s Bath, accession M.62.8.14, also known as Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child. Its credit is the Mrs. Fred Hathaway Bixby Bequest. The current provenance follows a Pope-family and dealer history before Bixby’s ownership and the museum bequest. ^[18]

The two examples add something beyond geographical variety. They show different collectors, intermediaries and institutional gifts. Cassatt’s American museum presence grew through several networks, rather than a single transfer that explains every collection.

European collections and the importance of exact titles

Bilbao Museoa identifies Mujer sentada con un niño en brazos, accession 82/25, as an oil of about 1890. Its Spanish record concerns that particular painting. The generic wording woman and child should not make it the same object as the Metropolitan Museum’s The Oval Mirror or a differently arranged legacy image. ^[5]

The Pushkin Museum’s Russian record for Мать и дитя, accession Ж-3429, identifies a pastel on paper acquired in 1948. Its broad date description should not be silently narrowed to a precise year borrowed from another mother-and-child work. Language differences in titles make accession and medium particularly useful across collections. ^[6]

The distinction is equally important for loans. The Arp Museum’s 2024 exhibition flyer captions Louise, ihr Kind stillend as a work of the Collection Rau for UNICEF. A later Luxembourg exhibition caption presents Louise, Nursing Her Child, GR1.949, in a dated loan context. Appearing in an exhibition in another country does not transfer the collection identity to that venue. ^{[8] [9]}

The records also use slightly different dating, 1898–99 in the Arp flyer and 1899 in the Luxembourg caption. Those source descriptions can coexist without inventing two pictures or resolving every date more precisely than the evidence permits.

Japan: collection research and exhibition history

An Artizon Museum study published in 2020 provides a Japanese institutional example. Kagawa Kyoko’s essay examines The Sun Bath (After the Bath), captioned as a 1901 oil in the Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo. The English text is a translation of Japanese scholarship, rather than an independent second authority for the same collection object. ^[4]

Such a publication can contribute more than a location. It supplies interpretation, bibliographic leads and discussion of related works. Those functions should still be separated from a current gallery schedule or an assumption that every comparison reproduced in the article belongs to the publishing museum.

Likewise, a Japanese retrospective checklist can include works lent from several countries. An exhibition’s location establishes an appearance there, not permanent ownership of all the listed loans. The distinction helps readers use international exhibition records without turning a past event into a present collection guide.

One print design can be in several museums

The Van Gogh Museum’s 2021 annual report records four distinct Cassatt acquisitions: The Letter, p3056S2021; Woman Bathing, p3057S2021; The Fitting, p3058S2021; and a loge print, p3059S2021. Each number identifies a particular acquired sheet. The report’s treated-works list does not describe treatment methods or establish present display. ^[3]

Another museum can own an impression of the same design without either record being mistaken. Different sheets may have different paper, state, inscriptions, colouring and ownership history. A familiar image found in two collections is therefore a reason to compare object records, not proof that one museum has misidentified its holding.

Cassatt’s printmaking also includes preparatory drawings and proofs with different roles. A drawing, its reverse and a final impression cannot be treated as three identical copies. The National Gallery’s process examples make these distinctions especially clear. ^[12]

A complete view of a sheet is especially helpful when comparing prints. The printed image and the paper surrounding it are different areas, and an inscription may lie outside the plate boundary. A reproduction cropped to the image can conceal both the size of the margins and written information beneath it. Begin by identifying what the photograph includes before comparing the apparent proportions of two museum examples. A close detail may explain a figure, but it cannot stand in for a complete view when the question concerns the physical sheet.

A museum collection is not a fixed installation

Susan Alyson Stein’s history of the Havemeyer bequest explains why ownership and gallery arrangement need separate accounts. The bequest developed through family and curatorial decisions; its temporary grouped installation in 1930 was followed by distribution among museum departments. A historical display condition does not supply a permanent promise about one gallery today. ^[7]

The same principle applies to older loan credits and private collections named in auction catalogues. A lender in a 1970 exhibition is a historical relationship, not automatically a current owner. A picture offered for sale cannot be assigned a new owner simply from the existence of an auction page.

For a particular visit, the relevant museum’s current object and exhibition information should be checked for that exact work. The collection links here give a reliable starting point through accession numbers. They do not substitute for a fresh confirmation of display, a temporary exhibition or arrangements for viewing works on paper.

Cassatt’s paintings and biography can guide the choice of what to study, while material and object identity shape the questions taken into the museum. Seeing an oil’s scale, a pastel’s surface or a print’s full margins can change an understanding formed from a small reproduction. The most rewarding collection comparison begins with knowing which physical work is actually before you.