The Paris of the late 19th century was a city full of show. Baron Haussmann’s grand boulevards were great for strolling and viewing fine new buildings and fine new people. This strolling and viewing can be seen in the art, as in Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877), or at the horseraces at Longchamp, as in Edgar Degas’ The Parade (1868), or a night’s entertainment, as in Edouard Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882). Perhaps the grandest place for en masse people-watching was the Palais Garnier Opera House, that fabulous building that seats nearly 2,000 people all in one glorious space. As opposed to the streets of Paris, the racetrack, or the folies, the opera house offered a female the perfect setting to enjoy watching people, often with the aid of opera glasses which could magnify the figures for close-up viewing. Mary Cassatt, an American impressionist painter living in Paris took full advantage of this to offer a number of observed figures, whose inner thoughts we might only guess, in a series of paintings referring to the loges or the box seats.
The loges in the Palais provided a great venue for viewing. As women were allowed to come to the opera (only with a male companion, of course, in keeping with 19th century mores), the opportunity to see and be seen yielded exciting possibilities to show themselves in evening splendor, see who was with whom, and make connections of their own. Juicy! The woman in black in Cassatt’s painting may have been her sister, Lydia. Regardless, what we see is a woman with her opera glasses trained on someone (or ones) across the cavernous space of the palais. The lights are on in the house, which means nothing is happening on the stage. The woman’s opera glasses are trained not down toward the stage but across to the other side of the theater, where she views intently something or someone of interest.
Meanwhile to her right and just in the bend of the curving gallery of chairs is a man who is viewing this same lady, all dressed in her very demure black. Unlike her binocular opera glasses, his has a single lens, probably expandable like a spyglass, both the style and shape of which are symbolic of a certain interest he may have in what he has spied. However, he is not the only voyeur, because Cassatt has arranged these figures so that the viewer of the painting is also involved. The viewer can look at this woman who does not see that she is being spied upon and silently chuckle at how unaware she is of being admired. We can, of course, expand this by thinking about who in the museum is watching the person who is watching the characters in this painting.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) grew up near Pittsburgh, studied painting in Philadelphia before going to tour Europe. In 1873 she settled in Paris and became part of the group calling themselves Impressonists. She is one of only three women and the only American to join the French Impressionists. “Cassatt’s painting explores the very act of looking, breaking down the traditional boundaries between the observer and the observed, the audience and the performer.” collections.mfa.org
Here again we have two young women at the opera. The lighting might suggest that the young woman with the binoculars is actually looking at the stage, as the theater behind her is dark. She and the female with her have the front of their bodies lit by a bright light, coming from the direction that the young woman is viewing, once again most probably the stage. Since the viewer of the painting is the secret observer here, that viewer would notice the attire of the young women, the white gloves, the delicate fan, and the off-shoulder dresses decorated with flowers. They are themselves two blossoms being presented in the opera’s springtime.
In this scene, the house lights are up, and the young woman looks not in the direction of the stage, which would be to her left, but straight across the theater to the loges opposite her. She has no binoculars. Cassastt captures the idea of a full house of attendees in a quick impressionistic style of splotches of color. The rich operatic red of the interior is balanced with the soft yellow-green of spring, which is the dominant color that the young woman wears. With flowers in her hair, and her skin rosed up by the dramatic theater lighting, this young woman leans forward to both see the spectacle of opera goers and show her own lovely countenance. And we, the viewers, get to view her and imagine who might be taking a look at her from some distant balcony.
Unlike the more shy young woman who sits in the shadows of an upper loge, leaning forward to be seen, here we have a mature lady who takes center stage in the orchestra-level seating. The model for this and several of Cassatt’s paintings was her sister, Lydia. Cassatt takes full advantage of the dramatic theater lighting to show off this confident beauty who wears a single strand pearl choaker. Cassatt shows the woman’s audience by giving us the scene of the balcony seats just behind and to the right of this woman. They appear as splotches of color above the gold that trims their box seats, while Lydia is all pinks and pale violets, a living Valentine. Cassatt’s observations of the effects of light allow her to make Lydia glow, with bright light on one side that falls into dappled shadows in blues and violets over her face and arms. In contrast, her coppery hair glows in the bright light as if a personal beacon hailing all with a “look at me” signal. We, who are doing our own silent viewing, wonder who else in that theater was captivated by this smiling beauty with a pearl necklace.
Mary Cassatt was as innovative as any of the other impressionists and her work a standout in terms of its subject matter. Her work in her series of loge paintings particulary captures the way that the opera was a cultured way for women to be present and seen in Parisian society. It opened opportunities for them to make connections of many kinds, such as engagements that led to marriage or encounters that led to “patrons” for those women known as Les grandes horizontales. The flowers in the hair and dresses of the women often signaled a variety of things. Most famously, Marie Duplessis, the original Lady of the Camelias, wore red flowers at a certain time of the month to let her patrons know that she was indisposed for a few days.
While both Renoir and Degas did paintings of the Palais Garnier’s loges, Cassatt’s series invoke more mystery, as they make the viewer wonder what is going on in the minds of the people who are so engaged in looking at one another. Her paintings of the loges at the opera allow women to shine but from the point of view of another woman, one who was observing the various scenes that took place in that very public place. Cassatt, while famous for her paintings of women and children, was also a close friend of Edgar Degas and sometimes about his only friend, as Degas had a rather difficult personality. There is some speculation that he had a hand in doing some background work in a few of her paintings, like Little Girl in Blue Armchair. However, that would be a good subject for another blog post.
Note: For those anywhere near Denver, Colorado, before March 13th, the Denver Art Museum is hosting a traveling show of some 100 paintings in an exhibition called Whistler to Cassatt, American Painters in France. If you miss Denver, from April 16 to July 31, 2022, the same show will be at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA.
Paintings used in this post are in Public Domain.
Articles used to research this post are as follows:
“France’s Forgotten Impressionist” by Lara Marlowe irishtimes.com
“In the Loge: Mary Cassatt knew that staring was rude” by Jennifer Tucker, sartle.com
Paris: Capital of the 19th Century by Dana Goldstein, Brown University. library.brown.edu
For more on Marjorie Vernelle, see the author page at amazon.com/author/marjorievernelle or go to the Art Blog at vernellestudio.com
Women in Wine: The Female Vintners
Gone are the days when the image of women winemakers was one of barefoot peasant women stomping around in vats of grapes. No. It’s a new day, and time to take a look at what women have been doing to make their mark in this male-dominated industry. The McBride Sisters’ Black Girl Wines was mentioned in the last post on Richard Mayhew and Black-American Vintners. In this case, one of the sisters grew up in New Zealand and the other in Monterey, California. When they found each other in 2005, they realized they had this desire to work with winemaking (click the link above to see their story). Their motto is “Break the rules. Drink the wine.” They have been creating delicious wines in a variety of formats, including the She Can ever since they hooked up in 2005. Their website not only shows the wines, but also does guides on food pairing and has a downloadable e-Cookbook. Just click here or go to their website’s Eat+Drink tab (mcbridesisters.com).
The mother and two daughters above make some of Italy’s most elite wines in their winery, which was built from an old monastery in Termeno, Italy, a commune not far from Bolzano in the north of Italy. The daughters have studied winemaking in France and Australia and returned to Italy to work with their mother, who believes that “beauty must go with quality.” Jeffrey Wolfe, the author of the article, “Women Who Make Wine” goes on to talk about other female vintners like Kristen Belair of Honig Winery in the Napa Valley, who points out that 15% of the vintners in the Napa Valley are women.
There is some evidence that women have certain qualities that make them superb vintners. Karen McNeil’s blog Wine Speed (winespeed.com) presents evidence that women have superior senses of taste and smell, both of which are critical when it comes to making wine (not to mention the food pairings to go with the wines). The science says that women have 50% more olfactory cells in their brains than men, and that comes from studies done by the University of California, San Franciso, School of Medicine.
Added to this is the women’s ability to know that they must stick together in order to make an impact. WOW or Women-Owned Wineries is a group of female winemakers started by Amy Bess Cook, a writer and communications consultant, as a way to present the public with the choice of supporting women vintners. A “vote with your dollars” sort of movement, the association has grown to some 50 women winemakers in the Sonoma Valley. See the article by Laura Scholz on vinepair.com
From Argentina, to Australia, Austria, Chile, France, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S.A, women are showing up as superb winemakers. Decanter’s article “Women in wine: award-winning wines by influential females” gives a run-down on the achievements of female vinters in the countries listed above (click the link under the photo). Each has a story of trial and travail leading to great success, and it is only the beginning.
For more on Women in Wine, take a look at these websites to get a fuller and quite inspiring overview of what is happening in this area of winemaking:
“California’s Next Generation Lead Women Winemakers and the Promise that Accompanies their Success,” grapecollective.com
“11 Best Wines Made by Women,” bestproducts.com
“Five Inspiring Women in the World of Wine,” townandcountrymag.com.
“Women in Wine, Top Female Winemakers” Decant with D video for Women’s History Month on youtube.com
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©marjorie vernelle 2022
COMING SOON: An Art History C.S.I. Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet – Love? but no Letters, plus Veuve Clicquot, the Widow and Her Champagne.
Lovely, isn’t she? That is Berthe Morisot, a painter in her own right, who was the subject of 17 portraits by Edouard Manet, painted right up until she married his brother. The Morisot family and the Manet family were quite close and had lots of correspondence between them, invitations, social events, and the like. However, despite Manet’s obvious interest in Berthe, as she modeled for all those portraits, there is not one letter between the two of them, an art history mystery.