Mary Stevenson Cassatt (Pittsburgh, May 22, 1844 - Château de Beaufresne, June 14, 1926) was an American painter. She lived for a long time in France where she became a friend and pupil of Degas, later exhibiting her own works along with those of the artists of the Impressionist movement.
Cassatt made many paintings depicting the social and private lives of the women of her time, paying particular attention to the intimate bond that is made between mothers and their children.
Mary Cassatt's Childhood and youth
She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, a locality that has now become part of then neighboring Pittsburgh. He came into the world into a very wealthy and educated family: his father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later changed to Cassatt) was a wealthy stockbroker and land broker while his mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a very wealthy banking family.
The original surname of her ancestors was Cossart Mary is distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. She has six brothers and sisters, two of whom die in childhood. The family moves to the East Coast, first to Lancaster, then to the Philadelphia area, where Mary begins school at age six.
She grows up in an environment that considers travel an integral part of education; she spends five years in Europe, visiting many of the continent's capital cities, including London, Paris and Berlin. While abroad he learned German and French and took his first lessons in music and drawing.
His first encounter with French artists Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, and Courbet probably occurred during the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris. Also present at the exposition with their works are Degas and Pissarro, who would become Cassatt's colleagues and mentors.
Despite family opposition to her decision to become a professional artist, Mary Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia when she was only fifteen years old. Part of her parents' concerns probably stemmed from a fear of the possibility that Mary would end up in contact with feminist ideas as well as the bohemian lifestyle of some of the male students.
Although at least one-fifth of the students are girls, most of them understand art only as extra knowledge that can enrich their social lives: only a few, like Mary, are determined to make it their profession. Cassatt continued her studies during the period of the Civil War. Among his classmates is Thomas Eakins, who would later become a rather controversial Academy director.
Impatient with the slow pace of her studies and the superior attitude toward her by male students and teachers, she decides to study the great European masters on her own. Mary then chose to discontinue the course (which at the time, however, did not guarantee any degree) and, overcoming her father's objections, moved to Paris in 1866, accompanied by her mother and some family friends.
Since women were not allowed to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, she took private lessons from the school's teachers and was accepted as a pupil by Jean-Léon Gérôme, who was well known for his highly refined academic technique and his paintings inspired by exotic themes. A few months later Gérôme also accepted Eakins as his pupil.
Cassatt also further exercises his techniques and skills by going to the Louvre museum daily to copy the works on display (after obtaining a regular permit, a procedure that became necessary to keep in check the number of copyists, usually underpaid women, who crowd the halls to make copies of paintings and sell them).
The museum also serves as a meeting place for female art students from France and the United States who, like Cassatt, are not allowed to frequent the cafés, where the avant-garde figures of the time gather instead. It was precisely in this way that her friend and colleague Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and ended up marrying the celebrated Academy painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Toward the end of 1866 she joined the student group of Charles Chaplin, a well-known genre artist. In 1868 he also studied under Thomas Couture, a painter mainly of romantic subjects and cityscapes. These often accompanied their students on field trips, where they made life drawings, especially of peasants on their way to work.
Also in 1868, one of Mary's paintings, which she submitted under the name Mary Stevenson, A Mandolin Player, was accepted by the jury making the selection for the Paris Salon. The work follows the Romantic style of Corot and Couture, and is one of only two paintings of hers from the first decade of her career that are known today.
The French art scene is profoundly changing, as artists of radical ideas such as Courbet and Manet attempt to break away from the commonly accepted academic tradition; in the same years the Impressionists are appearing on the scene.
Eliza Haldman, a friend of Cassatt's writes in a letter to family members that artists "are abandoning the style of the Academy and each seeking a new way, consequently right now there is a great confusion."
Mary Cassatt, however, continued to work in the traditional style, submitting her work to the Salon for over a decade, but with increasing personal frustration.
Returning to the United States in the late summer of 1870-since the Franco-Prussian War was breaking out-Cassatt went to live with her family in Altoona. Her father continues to oppose her chosen career, and merely finances her basic needs, but not the materials to be able to paint.
She manages to exhibit two paintings in a New York art gallery, where she finds many admirers but no buyers. In the family's summer residence she then also finds herself short of colors and considers giving up art, as she is determined to succeed in leading an economically independent life. In a letter of July 1871 she writes:
"I have left my studio and abandoned my father's portrait, have not touched a brush for six weeks and will not do so again until I see some chance to return to Europe. I am very eager to go west next fall and get a job, but I haven't decided where yet." He went to Chicago to seek his fortune, but ended up losing many of his paintings in the great fire of 1871.
A short time later her work attracts the attention of the Archbishop of Pittsburgh, who commissions her to make two copies of paintings by Correggio found in Parma, Italy, and advances her enough money to cover her travel expenses and part of her stay.
In excitement she writes, "O, how eager I am to get to work, my fingers itch and my eyes moisten at the thought of seeing a beautiful painting again." She then leaves again for Europe with Emily Sartain, a young artist like herself from a family of artists in Philadelphia.
Mary Cassatt encounter with Impressionism
In the fall of 1871, only a few months after her return to Europe, prospects for Mary Cassatt improved markedly. Her Two Women Throwing Flowers during Carnival gets a good reception at the 1872 Salon and finds a buyer.
She found an even warmer reception in Parma, where she was supported and encouraged by the local art community: "All Parma is talking about Miss Cassatt and everyone is eager to meet her."
After completing the work entrusted to her by the archbishop, Mary made a trip to Madrid and Seville, where she produced a group of paintings with typically Spanish subject matter, including Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873). In 1874 she decided to set up residence in France.
She is joined by her sister Lydia and shares an apartment with her. Cassatt continues to criticize the politics of the Salon and the conventional taste that remains prevalent in that institution. Her comments are quite blunt, as reported by Sartain, who writes, "her criticisms are always sharp and sarcastic, she snubs all modern art, she despises the paintings found at the Salon by Cabanel, Bonnat and all the names we are accustomed to respect."
Mary sees that women artists' works are often taken down and rejected with contempt unless the artist herself has a friend or protector on the jury, and she is unwilling to flirt with jurors to gain favor with them. Her cynicism grows when one of the two paintings she proposed in 1875 is rejected by the jury only to be admitted the following year after she darkens its background.
She argues with Sartain who thinks Mary talks too much and is too self-centered, and eventually the two friends part ways. Cassatt decides it is best to move away from genre painting and into more fashionable subjects, to try to attract portrait commissions from the U.S. community abroad, but the attempt initially bears little fruit.
In 1877 both of her works were rejected, and for the first time in seven years she had no paintings exhibited at the Salon. At this very critical moment in her career she is invited by Edgar Degas to show her work to the Impressionists, a group of artists who began in 1874 to organize independent exhibitions of their work, with good public success.
The Impressionists (also known as the Independents or Intransigents) did not identify themselves with any formal "manifesto," and differed considerably among themselves both in the subjects they dealt with and the technique they employed.
They tend to prefer painting in the open air and applying color in single brushstrokes, mixing the colors little before putting them on the canvas, a technique that allows the eye to perceive the result impressionistically. The group has been in the crosshairs of official critics for several years now.
Henry Bacon, a family friend of the Cassatts, thinks the Impressionists are so radical in their painting that they are "afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of sight." The Impressionists already include a woman artist, Berthe Morisot, who becomes Mary's friend as well as colleague.
Cassatt admired Degas, whose pastels deeply affected her when she saw them in 1875 in a gallery owner's window. She would later recall, "I used to press my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art. That changed my life. In that moment I saw art as I wanted it to be."
He then accepted Degas' invitation with enthusiasm and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist exhibition, scheduled for 1878 and which, after a postponement due to the Universal Exhibition, began on April 10, 1879. He felt at ease with the Impressionists and joined their cause with passion, declaring "we are sustaining an unequal struggle and we must rally all forces."
Since he cannot frequent cafés like his colleagues without attracting unsavory attention, he meets them in private and at exhibitions. He counts on achieving commercial success, selling the paintings to sophisticated Parisians who favor the avant-garde. In the two years since, his style has gained in spontaneity.
Whereas before she always worked in a studio, she now got into the habit of carrying a sketchbook with her when she was outdoors or at the theater, and sketching the scenes she saw in it.
In 1877 she is joined in Paris by her parents, who return with her sister Lydia. Mary enjoys their company, since neither she nor Lydia were married. Mary soon determined that marriage would be incompatible with a career. Lydia, who often modeled for her sister, was often ill, however, and her death in 1882 left Mary unable to work for a time because of grief.
Her father insists that the costs of the studio and her expenses should be covered by sales, which, however, are still meager. Frightened by the idea of having to paint works of little value to make ends meet, Mary works hard to produce quality paintings for the next Impressionist exhibition. Three of her best works from 1878 are Portrait of the Artist (self-portrait), Child in a Blue Armchair and Reading the Figaro (portrait of her mother).
Degas exerts a considerable influence on Mary, who becomes very skilled in the use of pastels, eventually making many of her most important works with this technique. Degas also had her make her first works in etching, a technique in which he is recognized as a master.
The two worked side by side for a time, and Mary's drawing technique improved greatly under the French artist's guidance. He portrays her in a series of etchings capturing their visits to the Louvre. She has very strong feelings toward him, but has learned not to expect too much from his fickle and capricious nature. The sophisticated and elegant Degas, then 45 years old, thus becomes a frequent and welcome guest on evenings at the Cassatt home.
The Impressionist exhibition of 1879 was the most successful of any organized up to that time, despite the absences of Renoir, Sisley, Manet, and Cézanne, who were once again trying to gain recognition from the Salon.
Thanks to the efforts of Gustave Caillebotte, who organized and financed the exhibition, the group of artists managed to make a good profit and sell many paintings, although criticism continued to be as harsh as usual.
The Revue des Deux Mondes writes, "Mr. Degas and Miss Cassatt are, however, the only artists who stand out...and who offer some reason for appeal and justification in a pretentious display of window displays and childish scribbles."
Mary exhibits eleven works, including La Loge. Although some critics argue that the colors she uses are too bright and that her portraits are executed too carefully to please clients, her work is not slaughtered like Monet's, at the time considered the worst of all the Impressionists.
The painter uses her share of the earnings to purchase for herself one work by Degas and one by Monet. She continued to exhibit at subsequent Impressionist shows in 1880 and 1881, remaining an active part of the circle until 1886. In that year Mary prepared two paintings for the first Impressionist exhibition in the United States, organized by art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
Her friend Louisine Elder had married Harry Havemeyer in 1883 and, on Mary's advice, the couple began collecting Impressionist works. Much of their extensive collection today is in the Met in New York. During this period he produced several portraits of members of his family, one of the best known of which is Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and his son Robert Kelso (1885).
Her style evolved and broke away from Impressionism in favor of a simpler, more direct approach to painting. Mary also began exhibiting her work in New York galleries. After 1886 she no longer identified with any artistic movement, instead experimenting with a variety of different techniques.
The continuation of Mary Cassatt's career
Mary Cassatt's popularity is mainly due to a long series of paintings and prints on the theme of the mother with her child, done with a rigorous line, in which the subjects are viewed with tenderness but without ever straying into excessive sentimentality.
His first work with such a theme for which we know the date is the Gardner drypoint Held by His Mother (a copy dated January/88 is in the New York Public Library), although he had previously painted a few similar works.
Some of these works depict his relatives, friends or clients, although in later years he generally used professional models to create compositions that often resemble the Madonnas with Child typical of the Italian Renaissance. After 1900 he focused almost exclusively on this type of subject.
In 1891 she made a series of original and colorful drypoint and aquatint prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, inspired by the works of Japanese masters that had been exhibited in Paris the previous year.
Mary is attracted to the simplicity and transparency of the forms of Japanese art and the skill with which the color groups are employed. Interpreting them in her own way, she uses mainly delicate and luminous pastel colors, while avoiding black (a forbidden color among the Impressionists).
A. Breeskin, of the Smithsonian Institution, observes that these color prints "now stand as his most original production...adding a new chapter to the history of the graphic arts... technically, as color prints, they have never been surpassed."
The decade from 1890 to 1900 is the most creative time in Mary's career, and the one in which she works the most. She has matured greatly and has learned to express her opinions more diplomatically and less sharply.
She also becomes a role model for young U.S. artists who seek her advice. Among them is Lucy A. Bacon, whom Mary introduces to Camille Pissarro.
Although the group of Impressionists has now disbanded, Mary still keeps in touch with some of them, including Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. As the new century arrived, she became the adviser to several of the major art collectors, making it a condition that they eventually donate their acquisitions to U.S. museums.
Although her advice is considered invaluable by collectors, in her own country real recognition of the value of her art is slow to come. Even among her family members she is not highly regarded and is completely overshadowed by her brother's fame.
Mary's brother, Alexander Cassatt (president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1899 until his death) disappears in 1906. Mary is shaken by this, as they were very close, but still continues to be very active until 1910.
During these years there is a growing sentimentality in her work; her works are popular with the public and critics, but she no longer experiments with new avenues, and her Impressionist colleagues, who once stimulated her with their criticism, die one after another. She has no appreciation at all for new artistic currents such as post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.
A trip to Egypt made in 1910 thrills Mary because of the beauty of the ancient works of art she sees, but soon afterwards the artist is seized by a creative crisis; not only exhausted by the trip, she also declares herself "crushed by the power of her art," saying "I struggled against it, but it conquered me, it is without doubt the greatest form of art that the past has left us...how can my feeble hands paint the effect it has had on me."
In 1911 she fell ill with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia and cataracts: for a time she did not slow down her work, but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting because she became almost blind. She nevertheless had the strength to embrace the cause of the vote for women and, in 1915, presented 18 works at an exhibition organized to support the movement.
She died on June 14, 1926, at Château de Beaufresne, near Paris, and was buried in the family tomb at Mesnil-Théribus.
In recognition of her contribution to the arts, France had awarded her the Legion of Honor in 1904.
A TV film Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist by Richard Mozer (1999) was dedicated to her figure.
Mary Cassatt's Famous Works
- The Reading of Figaro (1878)
- Child in a Blue Armchair (1878)
- The Five o'clock Tea (1880)
- Young Women in the Box (1882)
- Little girl fixing her hair (1886)
- Woman at the Bath (1890-1891)
- The stocking - The stocking (1891), Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon