Mary Cassatt — Colour on Copper — Book

The book

In the spring of 1890 Mary Cassatt saw an exhibition of Japanese prints in Paris and wrote to Berthe Morisot that she thought of nothing else but colour on copper. In less than a year she made ten colour prints, each printed from two or three copper plates, with a printer working beside her.

This book shows the ten as whole sheets and up close, in the Art Institute of Chicago’s impressions, with an essay on how they were made and first shown, the stages of In the Omnibus from the drawing to the print, and a chapter on her life.

Why this book is different

The images of these prints are online, free, on the museums’ own websites. This book does something the museum page doesn’t: it shows you how to look at them. Every print gets two spreads. First the whole sheet, with what to look for, facing a detail at full page. Then a second spread that opens it further: the same print before its colour, the drawing behind it, or another impression, inked by hand in a different way.

One print, In the Omnibus, is followed from the first drawing to the finished print, step by step. Her life comes at the end, once you know the work. It is a selection with one route through it, not a catalogue: fewer pages, one question, every page there for a reason.

The object

A hardcover book, printed on Mohawk Superfine: a 120 gsm uncoated art paper with a soft matte surface, heavier than a magazine page and without the shine of a photo book. The cover is matte-laminated. A4, 68 pages, in English.

It is printed to order in the USA when you buy it, one copy at a time.

The ten prints in the impressions of The Art Institute of Chicago; drawings, proofs and other impressions from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and other public collections, credited page by page. Published independently by Métrica; not affiliated with the institutions credited.

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