The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art
Mary Cassatt, the American Impressionist artist, is a figure well worth getting to know. Born in 1844, Mary spent much of her adult life in Paris, and that’s where Lisa Groen sets her novel about Mary and her sister Lydia. Aged thirty-seven when the novel opens, Mary is at an inflexion point in her career. Her work has been turned down by the Paris Salon for the first time in seven years, and it’s only the arrival of her parents and her dear sister that have kept her spirits up. But Mary is about to meet Edgar Degas, a painter who will shape her work and turn her ordered world upside down when they begin a clandestine relationship.
The Cassatt Sisters paints an intimate, domestic picture of Mary Cassatt’s day-to-day life in Paris. Her sister is her best friend and frequent model, but the pair don’t see eye to eye over Mary’s relationship with Degas, and Mary’s drive to succeed sometimes stops her from seeing the needs of others around her. While the relationship with Degas portrayed here is largely fictional, Groen tells a story that is possibly true, at the same time as developing a well-worked portrait of two very different, but loving, sisters. The novel has the added benefit of an array of famous secondary characters including Berthe Morisot and the charming Camille Pissarro, whose character is particularly enjoyable. The text includes over twenty reproductions of artworks by Cassett and Degas, which make sense contextually in the story but disappointingly these are not titled or numbered, although they are listed at the end of the book.
