Among her principal works are “La tasse de the,” “Le lever du bebe,” “Reading,” “Mere et Enfant,” and “Caresse Maternelle.”

Miss Cassatt has exhibited at the Paris Salon, the National Academy, New York, and various other exhibitions, but her works are rarely if ever exhibited in recent days.  It is some years since William Walton wrote of her:  “But in general she seems to have attained that desirable condition, coveted by artists, of being able to dispense with the annual exhibitions.”

Miss Cassatt executed a large, decorative picture for the north tympanum of the Woman’s Building at the Columbian Exhibition.

A writer in the Century Magazine, March, 1899, says:  “Of the colony of American artists, who for a decade or two past have made Paris their home, few have been more interesting and none more serious than Miss Cassatt....  Miss Cassatt has found her true bent in her recent pictures of children and in the delineation of happy maternity.  These she has portrayed with delicacy, refinement, and sentiment.  Her technique appeals equally to the layman and the artist, and her color has all the tenderness and charm that accompanies so engaging a motif.”

In November, 1903, Miss Cassatt held an exhibition of her works in New York.  At the winter exhibition of the Philadelphia Academy, 1904, she exhibited a group, a mother and children, one child quite nude.  Arthur Hoeber described it as “securing great charm of manner, of color, and of grace.”

CATTANEO, MARIA. Bronze medal at the National Exposition, Parma, 1870; silver medal at Florence, 1871; silver medal at the centenary of Ariosto at Ferrara.  Made an honorary member of the Brera Academy, Milan, 1874, an honor rarely conferred on a woman; elected to the Academy of Urbino, 1875.  Born in Milan.  Pupil of her father and of Angelo Rossi.

She excels in producing harmony between all parts of her works.  She has an exquisite sense of color and a rare technique.  Good examples of her work are “The Flowers of Cleopatra,” “The Return from the Country,” “An Excursion by Gondola.”  She married the artist, Pietro Michis.  Her picture of the “Fish Market in Venice” attracted much attention when it appeared in 1887; it was a most accurate study from life.

CHARPENTIER, CONSTANCE MARIE. Pupil of David.  Her best known works were “Ulysses Finding Young Astyanax at Hector’s Grave” and “Alexander Weeping at the Death of the Wife of Darius.”  These were extraordinary as the work of a woman.  Their size, with the figures as large as life, made them appear to be ambitious, as they were certainly unusual.  Her style was praised by the admirers of David, to whose teaching she did credit.  The disposition of her figures was good, the details of her costumes and accessories were admirably correct, but her color was hard and she was generally thought to be wanting in originality and too close a follower of her master.