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Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born on May 22nd, 1844, in Allegheny City, United States of America, which is now known as the North Shore, Pittsburgh. She passed away on June 14th, 1926, in Château de Beaufresne, France. Her father was a stockbroker who was very successful, and her mother was from a well-off banking family. Mary Cassatt grew up living as an upper-middle class and her bringing up reflected greatly on her family’s high social standing. The Cassatts moved to Europe, France and Germany, with their children from 1851 to 1855. This was when Mary Cassatt learned how to speak French and German. These few years living in Europe gave her the early age exposure to the culture of the Europeans.
At the age of 16, in 1860, Mary Cassatt enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Unfortunately, during that time period, women were discouraged from pursuing any career. This led her attendance in school to be resented by other fellow male students. The courses they offered were also not up to Mary Cassatt’s standards. In 1865, she asked her parents if she could continue to pursue her artistic career in Europe. Initially, they were not so keen on her moving away by herself but eventually came to terms with it. In 1886, Mary Cassatt left for Paris where she could first handedly study the work of Old Masters. In her time in Paris, she studied closely with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Thomas Couture.
In 1870, not too long after the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Mary Cassatt reluctantly returned home to her family in America. Her artistic freedom and free spirit thinking that she enjoyed whilst living abroad was gone. She not only had troubles finding art supplies, her father refused to pay for anything art related. To earn some money, she tried selling some of her paintings in New York. However, that did not work out to her favor. Without giving up she tried selling her art again, this time through a dealer in Chicago. Sadly, in 1871, the paintings were destroyed in a fire. Fortunately, Cassatt’s life turned around for the better when she was contacted by the archbishop of Pittsburgh. He wanted to commission the artist to paint copies of two works by an Italian master Correggio. Without a doubt, she accepted the assignment and left for Europe immediately as the originals were displayed in Parma, Italy. From the commission she earned, she was able to continue her career in Europe. In 1872, she got her first major art showing at the Paris Salon, with 4 more annual shows after that. This helped her establish her career as an artist as she continued to study paint in Spain, Belgium, Rome, and Paris.
In 1874, she permanently resided in Paris where she established her own studio. She shared the interest in experimenting by using bright colors that were inspired by the outdoors. She became friends with Edgar Degas and his style together with the mixture of Gustave Courbet style, inspired her own. Edgar Degas was known to be a huge admirer of her art works and at his request, in 1879, she exhibited with the impressionists all through 1880, 1881, and 1886. Both Degas and Cassatt showed amazing mastery of drawing and both artists preferred candid asymmetrical compositions. Cassatt was also innovative in exploiting the use of the medium of pastels (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, par. 3).
Cassatt mainly painted figures of her family and friends, and their children in their everyday settings, just as other impressionists do. As per dictionary.com, the definition of impressionist is that it is a style of painting developed in the last third of the 19th century, characterized chiefly by short brush strokes of bright colors in immediate juxtaposition to represent the effect of light on objects. For example, she painted a picture of her brother, Alexander, reading a newspaper while his son Robert Kelso perched on the armchair. That painting could easily be mistaken for a Degas work of art due so how similar their style was. Both painters excelled in conveying “the fragmented light of Parisian apartments”, a contemporary critic wrote (Marlowe, par. 13). As the two artists were so similar in their works, numerous critics and historians to incorrectly label her as Degas’ pupil or disciple, implying her lack of originality.
In 1878, when Cassatt exhibited ‘In the Loge in Boston’, one critic praises it by writing that Cassatt’s work “surpassed the strength of most men” (Mary Cassatt Biography, Life & Quotes, par. 6).
In 1894, in the Oise region, north of Paris, Cassatt purchased Chàteau de Beaufresne. The property included a pond and a mill house which was used as a printmaker’s studio. Similar to Degas, however, unlike other impressionists, Cassatt hardly ever painted outdoors. Her painting of women and children boating on the pond feeding the ducks at Beaufresne are an exception.
Mary Cassatt’s paintings are so beautiful. They are painted with such depths and eye-catching colors. What I love about her work is that each and every one of her paintings tells a different story. It is so easy to imagine a scenario because of the great detailing and effort she put into each and every one of her art works. I can definitely tell by her art that she was very highly educated in fine arts with her passion for it showing greatly. I am really thankful and proud of women, like Cassatt, who did not care about what society thought about women pursuing a career at the time and continued doing what they loved. In doing so, it eventually helped to influence society to see that women should be treated equally to men.
Works Cited
- “Mary Cassatt: Children Playing on the Beach’ (1884). Artsy, http://artsy.net/artwork/mary-cassatt-children-playing-on-the-beach
- “Mary Cassatt”. Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 13 Apr. 2019, http://biography.com/artist/mary-cassatt
- Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Mary Cassatt: A Life. Yale University Press, 1994. JSTOR, http://jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bhkp6n
- “Mary Cassatt Biography, Life & Quotes”. The Art Story, http://theartstory.org/artist/cassatt-mary/life-and-legacy/
- Iskin, Ruth E. “Mary Cassatt: Une Impressionniste Américaine à Paris”. Nineteenth-century art worldwide : a journal of nineteenth-century visual culture. 18.1 (2019): n. pag. Web.
- “Mary Cassatt”. Biography, http://mayfieldschools.org/biography5065.aspx
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Mary Cassatt”. Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 June 2019, http://britannica.com/biography/Mary-Cassatt
- “Impressionism”. Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.com/browse/impressionism
- Marlowe, Lara. “France’s Forgotten Impressionist: The Art of Mary Cassatt”. The Irish Times, 2 June 2018, http://irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/visual-art/france-s-forgotten-impressionist-the-art-of-mary-cassatt-1.3512408
- Mary Cassatt: Une Impressionniste Américaine à Paris, http://19thc-artworldwide.org/spring19/iskin-reviews-mary-cassatt-une-impressionniste-americaine-a-paris
- “BibleGateway”. BibleGateway.com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., 1 Nov. 2019 http://biblegateway.com
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