In the early 2000s, mum was retired but She took a job as an attendant at the Tate. The house paid, her sons were adults, and she had a healthy pension from the ’60s.
Mum was always an art fan. She loved monet lilies and van gogh’s sunflowers. She took delight in Flanigan’s rope.
I was always quite apprehensive about these places. The offset of mum’s work meant we never grew up going to ‘the things’ museums for school trips, and galleries were otherworldly with a lot of class entitlement and body language, making me feel cramped and awkward and ignorant around them. That and a voice with better enunciation would ask me what I thought and then just tell me what to consider when I was three words in. generally with a heavy baritone.
But I have my Heinemann book on Mary Cassatt, and my work colleague has gone to great pains to keep the library with all the art books despite others wanting to sell them. And I’m reading this and other books on Mary, even writing this before I see the film. Thinking. Class. It’s those who take their kids ‘too young’ to art that has their kids walk around comfortably. It’s the ones who buy them the children’s book I am reading on an army cassette who take her for granted.
My mother was a modern woman. And I’m excited to learn what that means to others. Looking back at my trip this year, I do see similarities in intent and the interviews of helen frankenthaler ( i saw her work at the east dulwich picture gallery, the exhibition is now over)
Having seen the film, I gained much more of her and am delighted.
Following mainly her life chronologically, this is a documentary with very little dramatisation. A few moments where an actor mimics a model of the past but essentially takes in the paintings and the scenery the Cassatts would have grown and lived in.
It follows her work and the ups and downs with a very arch and academic tone. However, the enthusiasm of the all-female experts for what she has done and their curiosity and admiration are palpable.
Mary depicted women as verbs, not nouns, as an agency, not objects. And to me, what comes through is every woman is doing and driving, in one instance literally driving the horse and carriage while the groom sits ineffectually with his back to us.
But instead, they just give us a great raming to see her work, the colours and compositions holding fast to this extreme scrutiny of a cinema screen and camera. The smaller parts of her personal life help convey a fuller portrait. Raised in a family of shrewd acumen and affluence, Mary could be seen as living a dilettante’s life. But her role did not just empower women of her standing. She elevated and depicted the cleaners, sewers, teachers, maids and crafts that were going on around her in life and rarely seen in pictures, let alone photographs at this time.
It is also her acumen that allowed the impressionists a foothold in America, to see how they were the outliers within the Parisian scene, and while the force of the economy, she seems to have been the 5th beetle in the impressionist ensemble. Her relationship with deglas as a mentor is essential but never overpowers her work.
Her support of the suffragette movement and the renaming, thanks to the research of one of the historians from “Mother and Child” to “woman with sunflower”, is crucial to bringing a suitable ending to the film. We also see her criticisms that were received for painting mothers and children despite not having a child. A complaint was never placed against the men. On a personal note, these paintings remind me of something more recent. As lockdown came, I would clean mum’s hairbrushes and do her hair. She would play with mine as it had reached shoulder length, and the curls came through in me. We were having these moments of play and hair between us, and I see that in the softness of expression in each of these paintings, albeit with slightly reversed roles as two adults, one older.
It’s a hard film to judge. As someone who only did some cursory reading about her in the lead-up to the film, it added more and was a great way to learn more than I had. However, the reality is I had won the ticket to a competition. A ticket for a regular adult was £17.50. As such, I can’t help but question who would attend at that price without being a solid fan of the artistic movement and Cassatt herself. So it may fall between the goalposts that mid-brow often can.
I Would say it helped me think of mum and break down some of my inhibitions regarding art accessibility. And get annoyed with the man who sat in the middle of the screening, which no one needed to hear.
Dammit, Geoff,,,, it can’t all be about you. November geoff. November 21st.
Sigh..a worthwhile evening.
more information on
The Irish Indian Times. 
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