Mary Cassatt
(American, 1844 – 1926)



Mary Cassatt lived most of her adult life in France and was closely aligned with the French Impressionists. She was particularly influenced by the work of Edgar Degas. Two of the six works by Cassatt that the Popes originally acquired remain in Hill-Stead’s collection—an oil, Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby, c. 1901, and an aquatint, Gathering Fruit, from a series that the artist created just after viewing an exhibition of Japanese graphic arts in Paris in 1890. Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby is a prime example of Cassatt’s portraits of women and children engaged in domestic activities, casually presented, as opposed to formally posed.