Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Mary Cassatt

  • The vulnerability of love

    Florence Gelo Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   Breakfast in Bed, Mary Cassatt, 1897, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation. Courtesy of the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. On Thanksgiving Day, I watch my niece Jenn with her seven-month-old daughter Laila playing…

  • Rethinking the impulse to empathize: a sister’s perspective on sympathy and stigma

    Jeanne Farnan Pennsylvania, United States   Mary Cassatt, Mother Combing Sara’s Hair, 1901. Private collection. Web Gallery of Impressionism “I am so sorry.” My youngest sister, Annie, was born during the spring semester of my first year of high school. These four words are etched into my memory, integrally intertwined with the events of that…

  • Painter, interrupted: Mary Cassatt and illness

    Christoper Walker Bielsko-Biala, Poland   Self-portrait titled Portrait of the Artist, 1878, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The year is 1868, and the twenty-two year-old Mary Cassatt has had her first painting, The Mandolin Player, accepted by the famous Paris Salon. The painting is in the realist style and is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s 1659 Self-Portrait. The background…