Image: East Building of the National Gallery of Art, London
The National Gallery of Art has published a new interactive article on Mary Cassatt that focuses on her work as a printmaker rather than only on the paintings for which she is best known. Titled 'Mary Cassatt, the Daring Printmaker,' the feature looks back to spring 1890, when a major exhibition of Japanese woodcuts swept the Parisian art world and Cassatt found it revelatory. According to the gallery, she wrote at the time, “I can’t think of anything else but color on copper.”
The article presents Cassatt as one of the most innovative printmakers of her generation and frames printmaking as a demanding medium she helped transform through experimentation. The gallery says the interactive feature explains how she mastered a process described as notoriously messy and time-consuming, and it links that technical exploration to the artist’s broader reputation. Rather than treating her prints as a sideline to her painting practice, the new material places them at the center of Cassatt’s artistic development.
Cassatt’s response to Japanese woodcuts is the key historical reference point in the gallery’s account. The exhibition that inspired her was a major one, and the gallery connects that encounter to Cassatt’s turn toward color on copper and other printmaking methods. The source material does not spell out the full technical history in detail, but it makes clear that the exhibition’s impact was immediate and formative, helping set in motion a significant phase in her printmaking practice.
The interactive article is paired with the exhibition 'Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris,' which the gallery says is on view through Sunday, August 30. The newsletter material does not provide additional exhibition details, so the verified announcement leaves the focus on Cassatt’s print techniques and on the show’s current run. The exhibition is also identified in the source as the place where visitors can see her radical techniques in context.
The gallery’s presentation of Cassatt comes alongside other programming in the same newsletter, but the Cassatt feature is its own distinct item. The surrounding announcements include concerts and films, while the Mary Cassatt entry is explicitly labeled an interactive article. That distinction matters here: the gallery is using the digital feature to extend the exhibition, not to replace it, and to draw attention to a less familiar part of Cassatt’s practice.
For audiences encountering Cassatt chiefly through her paintings, the new feature positions her print work as an arena of experimentation and formal risk. The gallery’s wording underscores that she was not only a major figure in American art but also a maker engaged with a difficult medium at a moment of cross-cultural artistic exchange in Paris. The exhibition 'Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris' remains on view through August 30.
