Maiden’s Progeny an Afternoon With Mary Cassett, 1906

On a late spring afternoon in 1906 Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt is visited by despised English art critic Wynford Johnston. The two are at odds in the beginning, but over the course of his visit, their discussion of art and the place of women in that world alters their viewpoints forever.

Playwright, Le Wilhelm, who also directs the piece, has created a fascinating look back at a woman far ahead of her time, a woman who was one of the few of her class in station to become a professional artist, let alone one of the few Americans to be part of the Impressionist movement in France. A truly modern woman, Cassatt chose a life of singularity, a life as an artist rather than as a wife and mother, and her paintings were her only progeny.