CASSATT (MARY) Autograph letter signed ('Mary Cassatt') to Julie Pissarro ('Chère Madame'), in French, responding that she has been offered 1,500 francs for her Degas drawing and '...small woman...' by Manet from an art collector ('...he did not show much enthusiasm: you know well that these are sketches made to please an artist like Monsieur Pissarro above all...') and 1,800 francs for all three, including another Manet sketch, understanding she will be disappointed with the prices and suggesting she place the pictures, and the Cezanne watercolours, in the hands of Madame Mayer who has a buyer for a painting by Mme Morisot and the Cézannes ('...you will have no trouble entrusting her with paintings... tell her the lowest price you would accept...'), that if they had been more important she would have bought them herself, mentioning '...I believe you have a Renoir. Mme. Mayer might also have a buyer for that...', 4 pages on a bifolium, light dust-staining, creased at fold, 8vo (179 x 134mm.), Mesnil Beaufrance, [n.d. but end November 1903] Footnotes: 'JE CROIS QUE VOUS AVEZ AUSSI UN RENOIR': Mary Cassatt assists Pissarro's widow with his estate, and gives an insight into the influence of women artists and dealers in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century art market. As well as being a significant painter in her own right, Mary Cassatt, an American in Paris, played an important role in attracting her fellow countrymen to purchase works from the Impressionist painters, helping them in their times of financial hardship and disseminating their aesthetic ideals. Here she acts as an intermediary between Julie Pissarro and a potential buyer for works by Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Berthe Morisot and Renoir, all friends of her late husband. Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro had enjoyed a close friendship since 1879 when they worked with Edgar Degas on the aborted publication Le Jour et le Nuit. Although her relationship with Degas was famously volatile, her long friendship with Pissarro was based on mutual respect and collaboration, and she expressed her great sorrow at his death in a letter to Julie Pissarro included in this sale (see lot 103). Cassatt here recommends that Julie would get a better deal for her pictures from a 'Mme Mayer'. This was Rachel Mayer (née Oppenheim), widow of Saul (or Salvator) Mayer, dealer in prints and paintings operating from a premises at 5 rue Lafitte (known as 'Painting Street'), who had taken over her husband's business on his death in 1876. Our letter is not included in Nancy Mowll Mathews (ed.), Cassatt and her Circle, Selected Letters, 1984, but can be dated to around the end of November 1903 when Julie Pissarro was sorting out her husband's estate. At that time Cassatt wrote to Theodore Duret mentioning that Mme Pissarro had told her she was going to have a sale of her husband's effects in the spring but '...I know in the meanwhile if she found someone willing to pay the asking price she would accept. She also has several landscapes by Cezanne I am not familiar with...' (Selected Letters, p.295). This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing