Mary Cassatt
[[Image:cassatt_the_bath.jpg|thumb|right|225px|The Child's Bath (The Bath). Mary Cassatt. (1893). Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter often associated with the Impressionists, and known especially for depicting natural scenes of mothers with their children. Her paintings express a deep tenderness and her own love for children. Sadly, she never had children of her own. Mary herself chose that path, however, and perhaps through her paintings, made a much-needed statement to the women of the world—for that time and since. Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh, she was the daughter of a well-to-do businessman. Cassatt grew up in a close family, which also valued education. Her sister Lydia was to become her close companion and her brother Andrew, a patron of the arts. Her parents believed travel was a way to learn, and before she was 10 years old, she visited many of the capitals of Europe, including London, Paris, and Berlin.
At seventeen, despite her family's objections to her becoming a professional artist, she began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1861-1865). But the patronizing instructors and fellow male students, and the slow pace of her courses tired her. She decided to study the old masters on her own, so in 1866 she moved to Paris.
Returning to the United States at the outset of the Franco-Prussian War, she lived with her family, but was unable to sell a single painting. Art supplies and models were also difficult to find in her small town. Her father continued to resist her vocation, telling her, “I would almost rather see you dead!” and paid only for her basic needs. In winter 1871, she sailed to Italy, after she was commissioned by the archbishop of Pittsburgh to paint copies of originals in Italy. “Oh how wild I am to get to work…to see a fine picture again.” (p23) . after which she traveled about Europe
There she studied the paintings of Corregio, whose portrayal of babies—with their soft roundness—was magnificent. Cassatt incorporated this as well as his handling of light and shade and the effects of light playing on color, as her own. In Spain she studied the works of the great masters Velasquez and Murillo. She wrote that, “ I think one learns how to paint here…I really never in all my life experienced such delight in looking at pictures.” (p25) By 1873, after copying and thus learning from some of the greatest art works in Europe, her style had matured. She returned to Paris to see her second painting accepted by the Paris Salon.
The jury had first accepted her painting, The Mandolin Player, for the Salon in 1868, and then in 1873, her Torero and Young Girl. Still, her natural style was not accepted by the Salon critics, who claimed that her colors were too bright and that her portraits too accurate to be flattering to the subject. Cassatt was suspicious of the Salon, because she knew that all she had to do was paint the way they wanted her to, and her art would be accepted. None of that was her, though, and she longed to be free of them—as did some of her contemporaries.
Upon seeing pastels by Edgar Degas in an art dealer's window, she knew she was not alone in her rebellion against the Salon. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it." For his part, after Degas saw Mary’s Portrait of Madame Cortier in 1874, he announced, “There is someone who feels as I do.”
She met Edgar Degas in 1877, and he invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists: “I accepted with joy. I hated conventional art. I began to live.” (p36) “At last I could work in complete independence, without bothering about the eventual judgment of a jury.”
[[Image:Cassat CupOfTea.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Tea. (1880). Mary Cassatt. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.]]
As an active member of its circle, her work hung in Impressionist shows from 1879 until 1886. She remained friends with Degas, and also fellow Impressionist Berthe Morisot. Shortly after her triumphs with the Impressionists, Cassatt focused on caring for her mother and sister, who fell ill after moving to Paris. “With the failing health of her sister and chief companion, Lydia, and her ultimate death in 1882, Cassatt seemed to become increasingly aware of her own vulnerability and solitary life.” http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/s06/scase/about_the_author.html
Cassatt resumed painting by the mid-1880s. Writing after Cassatt’s mother and father had both passed, a friend said that Cassatt was “very lonesome…and says she feels…that perhaps she would have been better off to have married [rather than] being left alone in the world” (qtd Matthews 162). Cassatt’s self-doubts continued to trouble her—even though her work was ever more beautiful and powerful.
Her style evolved, and she moved away from impressionism to a simpler, straightforward approach. By 1886, she no longer identified herself with any art movement and experimented with a variety of techniques. In 1888 Cassatt began to work seriously on her now famous mother-child theme. Nearly one third of her paintings depict a mother and child portrayed in intimate relationship and domestic settings. In 1893, at Cassatt’s first solo exhibition, critics said, ”No painter has seen with so much feeling, nor has anyone, with such convincing art, translated into canvas the poem of the family.” (p79)
In recognition of her contributions to the arts, France awarded her the Légion d'honneur in 1904.
She died on June 14, 1926 at Château de Beaufresne, near Paris, and was buried in the family vault at Mesnil-Théribus, France.
Before 2005, her paintings sold for as much as $2.8 million.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- White, John H., Jr. (Spring 1986), America's most noteworthy railroaders, Railroad History, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, 154, p. 9-15. (mentions family relationship to Alexander J. Cassatt).
See also
- The SS Mary Cassatt was a World War II Liberty ship
External links
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