{"data":{"id":1276,"api_model":"articles","api_link":"https:\/\/api.artic.edu\/api\/v1\/articles\/1276","title":"Going Big for Chicago: Mary Cassatt\u2019s Mural, <i>Modern Woman<\/i>","copy":" In Modern Woman , one of the building\u2019s two key murals, Cassatt portrayed naturalistic figures engaged in outdoor activities, transforming the everyday into a grand, symbolic vision of female agency. She scaled up her signature subject matter\u2014contemporary women in their daily lives, rendered with seriousness and a sense of psychological depth\u2014and employed her characteristic vocabulary of robust forms, flattened spaces, dynamic brushwork, and a vivid palette. She also raised the stakes: No other project in her career rivals this one in terms of scope, complexity, and reach. Although the mural has not survived\u2014its last known location dates to 1912\u2014it remains one of Cassatt\u2019s greatest works of art.   Approximately 14 feet in height and 60 feet in length, the three-part composition adorned the building\u2019s Hall of Honor and featured 20-some women and girls across a verdant landscape.   In an orchard at center, a trio labored together, one woman reaching upward with both arms to grasp the fruit above while another on a ladder leaned downward to hand an apple to a child. Nearby, others took part in similar work. On the left, three girls chased after a flying figure personifying fame. On the right, another group formed a creative medley comprising a banjo player, a dancer enacting a popular routine known as a skirt dance, and a third, musing companion. Seeking higher education, pursuing dreams and renown, and contributing culturally to a larger community, the figures embodied a vision of modern womanhood for fairgoers on the cusp of a new century.   As Cassatt wrote to Chicago cultural leader Bertha Palmer, who headed the efforts to organize the Woman\u2019s Building, \u201cI took for the subject of the central & largest composition Young women plucking the fruits of knowledge or science &\u2014that enabled me to place my figures out of doors & allowed of brilliancy of color. . . . The occassion [ sic ] is one of rejoicing, a great national f\u00eate. I reserved all the seriousness for the execution, for the drawing & painting.\u201d   For Cassatt, 1893 proved a milestone moment. Based in France, where she had built a solid reputation among the avant-garde, the Pennsylvania-born artist aimed to cultivate a market for her work in the United States. With this project, one of the first US public mural commissions undertaken by a female artist, she gained a new level of visibility in the transatlantic art world. For Chicago, too, the year was an exceptional one. Showcasing technology and tradition, manufacturing and trade, and fine art and culture, the six-month World\u2019s Columbian Exposition unfolded across more than 600 acres along the lakefront on the city\u2019s South Side and marked a dramatic return to the global stage.   Twenty-two years earlier, much of the city had burned to the ground. In October 1871, when the Great Fire tore through Chicago, Cassatt was there. Then 27 years old, and having already trained for more than 10 years in the US and Europe, she was hungry to launch her career, traveling to the city with two of her paintings.   \u201cIn Chicago,\u201d she wrote to artist Emily Sartain, \u201cI met with more encouragement than anywhere else since I have been home [in the US], I had every hope, both for orders & selling my pictures, when the fire broke out, & [my two] pictures (which were in the largest jewelry store in the city) were burned!\u201d Cassatt herself escaped the city unharmed and returned east before sailing to Europe, eventually settling in Paris in 1874. There, in 1877, she daringly accepted an invitation from Edgar Degas to join the French Impressionists. Cassatt soon became a key member of this rebellious cohort and exhibited with them through the final group show in 1886. In the following years, she pursued new experiments in printmaking, pastel, and painting.   When Cassatt was offered the mural project by Palmer in May 1892, the artist carefully weighed the opportunity alongside the risks. A public commission like this one was rare, and she knew it would be incredibly demanding\u2014physically, logistically, and conceptually. \u201cAt first I was horrified,\u201d she admitted to friend and collector Louisine Havemeyer, \u201cbut gradually I began to think it would be great fun to do something I had never done before . . . I would not give up the idea for any thing.\u201d   Cassatt\u2019s decision to accept the assignment went against the grain of her Impressionist peers, who sidestepped public mural painting, regarding it as incompatible with their modernist aesthetics. In a letter to Camille Pissarro on June 17, 1892, she revealed, \u201cYou ought to hear Degas on the subject of a woman\u2019s undertaking to do such a thing, he has handed me over to destruction.\u201d As artists, Cassatt and Degas respected each other deeply, and so the Frenchman\u2019s bald masculinism must have been tough to take. But such sentiments also likely fueled Cassatt\u2019s determination to, indeed, \u201cdo such a thing.\u201d   In both subject matter and aesthetics, Cassatt made bold choices. The figures, who wore trending fashions of the 1890s, were decidedly earthbound in appearance, yet they embodied lofty ideas. The artist transposed their everyday pursuits into a celebration of women\u2019s efforts in the late 19th century to seize their place as active, equal players in the larger world. Cassatt\u2019s modernist vocabulary amplified her message. She modeled her sturdy figures within a large, decorative border; set them against flat expanses of color without shadows; and employed a striking palette of green, yellow, violet, red, and blue.   It is difficult today to imagine the experience of seeing Modern Woman in person. Reproductions in 1890s publications cannot convey its details, finesse, or scale. Fortunately, Cassatt approached the project strategically, recognizing its generative potential. She drew on the mural\u2019s content to execute a fulsome group of newly conceived paintings, pastels, and color prints. These extant compositions give us a sense of the mural\u2019s own vibrancy and impact.   Press accounts written during the fair offer important descriptive details, especially about the figures, border, and palette. Some critics reacted viscerally to what they saw, dismissing the artist\u2019s avant-garde vocabulary as ill-suited to a mural decoration. One journalist even called the composition \u201cimpudent\u201d and \u201cbrutal.\u201d Many of the male and female critics writing on Modern Woman entangled their assessments of Cassatt\u2019s art making with expectations about how a woman artist undertaking this unprecedented assignment should speak out.   Cassatt, for her part, went all in, adventurously embracing the challenge to attempt something new\u2014executing an enormous canvas celebrating women that was seen by perhaps millions of fairgoers. For nine months, she put her whole self into the project. As she revealed to artist Rose Lamb in November 1892, \u201cI certainly did not spend the summer in singing & dancing, but in the hardest of work.\u201d   The story of Modern Woman is at the heart of Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism . Examining Cassatt\u2019s daring work in the late 1880s and 1890s, the exhibition showcases the artist\u2019s modernist breakthroughs as a painter, printmaker, and muralist at the height of her career. Through loans of paintings and works on paper closely related to the mural project, letters from the Art Institute\u2019s archives, and an in-gallery video, it sheds further light on Cassatt\u2019s extraordinary decoration, enlivening the unlocated work for visitors today. I am thrilled to share more about this significant piece of Chicago history with you when the exhibition\u2014the first at this museum dedicated to Cassatt in more than 25 years\u2014opens to members on September 4. \u2014Annelise K. Madsen, Gilda and Henry Buchbinder Curator, Arts of the Americas ","source_updated_at":"2026-09-01T10:20:33-05:00","updated_at":"2026-09-17T23:15:06-05:00","timestamp":"2026-09-30T19:31:05-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The data in this response may be protected by copyright, and other restrictions, of the Art Institute of Chicago and third parties. You may use this data for noncommercial educational and personal use and for \"fair use\" as authorized under law, provided that you also retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained on the materials and cite the author and source of the materials.","license_links":["https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/terms"],"version":"1.16"},"config":{"iiif_url":"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2","website_url":"http:\/\/www.artic.edu"}}