This Art Changed Society's View of Women. Here's Why | Cassatt's Letter

What is that? Is that woman folding a paper plane? No one can resist a good paper plane. Her dress looks good though. At first, this would look like some ordinary artwork. You see the walls with beautiful designs, like that of a typical upper class European house. But wait, does that woman look like a sex worker? Might be the last thing that pops into your head. Well, watch on to find out just why this painting was so provocative and so novel in terms of style, subject matter, and even the woman's role in art for the 19th century. This piece is called The Letter by the famous Impressionist Mary Cassatt. It is part of a series of 10 prints directly inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. While Mary Cassatt is known for a lot of things, a few come to mind. First, her light-filled Impressionist paintings. Second, her efforts to paint women not as objects, but subjects. And children. Lots and lots of children. Some of them even a little creepy looking. But in early 19th century Paris, the last thing a woman was allowed to do was to befriend a sex worker. God forbid, go on to paint them for everyone to know. In fact, unlike men, women weren't even allowed to paint nudes in art school. European shops began to sell all kinds of Japanese goods, from fans to kimonos and woodblock prints called ukiyo-e. Some of these prints left a lasting impression on the budding artistic mind of Mary Cassatt. In some ways, western art disappointed her and she sought something new. She even once commented on how much she hated conventional European art. In 1890, in Paris, at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts, an exhibition took place. On display were Japanese woodblock prints. Mary Cassatt was a very excited part of the audience. After seeing these prints, she wrote to her friend and painter Berthe Morisot. You who want to make color prints wouldn't dream of anything more beautiful. You must see the Japanese. Come as soon as possible. Cassatt saw something fresh to her eyes in these prints. The flat, decorative color, linear perspective, negative space, and expressive patterns. She went, oh my god. Among the works she saw was the famous Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitakawa Utamaro. Utamaro's many women resonated with Cassatt. Cassatt's women were modern, European, upper-class women engaged in their daily activities, almost always indoors. But Utamaro's women were those who worked and lived in the Yoshiwara district of Edo. These sex workers were very similar to the ones that the Impressionists painted. This can be seen in Cassatt's peers like Manet's Nana and Olympia. Even Cassatt's close friend Edgar Degas often went to brothels to paint. Cassatt collected for herself a large number of ukiyo-e prints. And most of them were of Yoshiwara's sex workers. From the high-ranking courtesans called Oirans to the streetwalkers called Teppo. A year later, she had produced a series of 10 prints. She wrote, they were done with the intention of attempting an imitation of Japanese methods. Cassatt didn't just imitate the methods, but in a very clever way, imitated many gestures associated with the sex workers in Utamaro's print. If Cassatt wouldn't be able to go to the brothels of Paris, she drew inspiration from the geishas of Japan. Let's get back to that paper plane woman, shall we? The pattern of the woman's dress and the wallpaper manipulate space to use the white of the paper as negative space. This is a distinctly ukiyo-e trait. A woman in a beautifully patterned blue dress sits in a chair across a folding wooden table. Cassatt owned a similar table, actually. The wallpaper sports a beautiful print, like in most well-off French homes of the time. On the table rests a letter, which has been written as the woman seals the envelope. The woman, with Asian features, looks, well, she looks tired and saddened. But where are we? Don't you feel like suddenly your height has grown and you're looking from above? The perspective Cassatt gives us is from above. This places us, you and me, in the role of a voyeur, looking but not engaging. In ukiyo-e prints, this was a common technique. Since these prints were made for a mostly male audience, this voyeuristic perspective could seem enticing. In the letter, Cassatt combines two distinctly ukiyo-e gestures. The letter that sits on the table is something found in countless ukiyo-e prints. Often, courtesans were shown as writing letters to their clients to maintain relations. Like here, a high-ranking courtesan called Oiren, who, as she waits for her hair to dry, writes a letter to a male customer. And here, a low-ranked sex worker crumbles a letter in her hand. And here, the leaf pattern that Cassatt's woman sports in the letter was often worn by geishas in Utamaro's prints. Notice how similar the pattern of her dress is with the geisha on the right in this print. The geisha was the highest-ranked person in the pleasure district. She was trained in the arts, literature, and tea. The woman's bun is also shaped so as to imitate the elaborate buns of geishas in ukiyo-e prints. On the right-hand corner, if you look carefully, you'd find that something is written in faint script. It's Cassatt's acknowledgment of the young printer, Mr. Leroy. This acknowledgment also stems from Japanese tradition, which includes both the artist and the printer's signatures on a work. This is not the first time that Cassatt had subtly placed innuendos or symbols into her work. Even her famous painting, Woman with a Sunflower, might look like it's simple, but it never is, isn't it? If you look at that bright sunflower, yes, the large sunflower on the woman's dress actually was a popular symbol. It was whenever women were fighting for voting rights. Also, the placement of the sunflower is rather clever, if you know what I mean. The themes associated with the women of Tokyo's pleasure district appear repeatedly in Cassatt's series. The theme of women bathing was extremely popular in ukiyo-e prints. Even Cassatt's close friend and famous impressionist took inspiration from it. We see this in Woman Bathing, an image of a woman bare-chested and half-dressed grooming in front of a mirror. Much like ukiyo-e prints, Cassatt's work shows delicate outlines with floods of color. Dramatically foreshortened, asymmetrical composition that flattens the picture plane. Cassatt's koi fur is directly inspired by Utamaro's Takashima Ohisa, using two mirrors to observe her koi fur. Even in The Tub, she uses the theme of women and children grooming. This series is now seen as one of her most revolutionary works. But very few saw this during her time. Yet this artistic path helped change the course of European art. She transformed figures into two-dimensional shapes. She almost completely eliminated traditional shading and tonal variation. These were common techniques to create an illusion of depth in Western art. Even though most visible in The Ten, this Japanese influence would stay with Cassatt. Like if you see both renderings of Cassatt's The Banjo Lessons, they evoke Utamaro's scenes of Japanese women playing the three-stringed samisen. In Cassatt's major work, The Boating Party, she combines what she had already discovered in Western art but also included flat blocks on bold colors. There is a collapsing sense of distance and perspective in the painting and as always, we are given a higher point of view. The Boating Party perfectly balances Cassatt's training in Western art, her meaningfulness of impression, and her experimentation with the viewer. In an age of messages and phone calls, we hardly write letters anymore. But I'm pretty sure the next time you write one, you'd remember Cassatt and the clever loopholes she found in 19th century Paris. What do you think about this series and this new trajectory in art? Leave your ideas in the comments, we'd love to hear from you. And as always, make your life artful!