Rethinking Mary Cassatt’s Reflection as a Self-Portrait
Print Quarterly, December 2019
Within her expansive body of work, there are currently only two extant self-portraits by Mary Cassatt: one in the National Portrait Gallery (c. 1880) and another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1878). This article proposes that a third be added to the list of Cassatt’s self-portraits: her drypoint entitled Reflection. Made in 1889-90, Reflection is one among her Set of Twelve, a suite of prints first exhibited as a group at the Deuxième Exposition des Peintres-Graveurs in 1890. Cassatt is identifiable thanks to a number of photographs from her later years, as well as the highly personal iconography that subtly pervades this under-studied print. Adding a third self-portrait to the Cassatt corpus allows for a more nuanced understanding of the artist’s self-image at what would become a pivotal moment in her career.