When I mention that artists incorporate tea themes into their work, the painter, Mary Cassatt is one of the first that come to mind. Her work is well-known and beloved. One of the authors writing about her work, Frank Getlein, in his book, ” Mary Cassatt, Paintings and Prints” states about her work, “If there is a universe in a drop of water, there is infinity in the taking of a cup of tea, and Mary Cassatt has explored the degrees of that infinity.”

She chose to paint the intimacy of women’s lives. In doing this, she elevated women and their daily activities. She marked these moments and held them up to the world as something to cherish. She is often quoted with the phrase, “I have touched with a sense of art some people – they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?”

This is what I think of as I’m visiting tea rooms. She sets a kind of benchmark by which taking tea is sometimes compared. She has preserved a comfortable elegance of women and children in relaxed, private moments. In many of her paintings it is as if the subjects are completely unaware that they are being observed. I doubt that any of the models posing for the artist imagined that their images would be held in such high esteem more than a hundred years later. But I believe it is these kinds of moments that the tea rooms in the U.S. are trying to create and for which we seek. The art of taking tea - whether gourmet specialty tea or convenient teabag - is the practice of tuning out the whine of electronics and the clatter of a compressed calendar to savor a few moments of calm. When we see the image of someone with a teacup either in a painting or in a film or as the setting in fiction, we immediately associate it with this kind of peace.

Two of her most famous paintings are portraits of her sister, Lydia, having tea. She painted “Tea” in 1880, an oil on canvas work now hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Her sister and a guest share what we assume to be a traditional afternoon tea with a guest.

It adds to our questioning of why tea is used as a setting and what the artist wants it to convey. There is a seriousness captured in this moment as Lydia, with her hand to her chin in the midst of conversation. Her be-hatted and gloved friend sips carefully.

But in another tea painting, Lydia is pictured alone. She is the one now wearing the hat and gloves, preserved in the moment when she brings the cup to her lips. But the colors are a more festive pink.

In her painting, The Cup of Tea, an oil on canvas painted in 1879 (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY), Lydia is shown to be more of the frilly feminine - quite opposite the image above. In exhibition, Joris-Karl Huysmans suggested that Mary Cassatt’s work expressed “a flutter of feminine nerves.”

One might say that the later painting, Tea (above) responded to show two different aspects of what we consider feminine.

A third and later painting from 1884 shows yet another face of art at the tea table with her painting, Lady At The Tea Table.

This painting shows another aspect of a woman at tea. But there is an interesting story behind this painting. The sitter in Lady At The Tea Table is Mrs. Robert Moore Riddle - Mary’s mother’s cousin. As the story goes, the families were very close and the elegant Japanese tea set was a gift to Mary from Mrs. Riddle’s daughter Annie. The painting is said to be a thank-you for the gift of the tea set. But there was some controversy over the likeness Mary painted so she kept the painting in her private collection.

And we may presume that she enjoyed many delightful afternoons of tea with the tea set.

The art world and the tea world come together as tea businesses find meaning in Mary Cassatt’s work. The Mary Cassatt Tea Room and Garden in The Rittenhouse Hotel in Phillidelphia serving a traditional English afternoon tea.

Mary Cassatt chose to illuminate the common activities in the daily lives of the women of her time. We are now remembering and reclaiming those activities in our contemporary lives.

As I continue to ask my “Why” question, this is certainly one part of the answer. There is something about the solitary moment for tea, the shared experience and the elegance of tea vessels that speaks to us through art. It has for centuries and I expect that to continue.

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