Mary Cassatt
Also Known as: Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Mary Stevenson
Also Known as: Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Mary Stevenson
Born:
Allegheny City, Pennsylvania 1844
Died:
Mesnil-Theribus, France 1926
Died:
Mesnil-Theribus, France 1926
Active in:
Paris, France
The daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania banker, Mary Cassatt moved to Paris in 1874. With the exception of two trips to America in 1898 and 1908, she lived there for the rest of her life. In the late 1870s, she and Edgar Degas, a leading figure among the French Impressionists, became friends, and during the next decade Degas had a profound impact upon her work. Under his guidance, she adopted the fresh colors and effects of light that were central to the new Impressionism. Intrigued by his etchings and by Japanese woodcuts, Cassatt also became a masterful printmaker.
Degas undertook this portrait of Cassatt as a token of their friendship. While Cassatt admired the portrait's artistry, she was displeased with her pose and seriousness. She owned the painting until at least 1913, but when she asked a Paris dealer to sell it, she stipulated that it not go to an American collection, where friends and family might see it.
Biography
Born to a prominent Pennsylvania family, Mary Cassatt spent her artistic career in Europe. Though unmarried, she was no stranger to the family life she so often depicted: her parents and sister moved to Paris in 1877 and her two brothers and their families visited frequently. Today considered an Impressionist, Cassatt exhibited with such artists as Monet, Pissarro, and her close friend Degas, and shared with them an independent spirit, refusing throughout her life to be associated with any art academy or to accept any prizes. She stands alone, however, in her depictions of the activities of women in their worlds: caring for children, reading, crocheting, pouring tea, and enjoying the company of other women.
Elizabeth Chew Women Artists(brochure, Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
Mary Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family soon settled in Philadelphia but traveled extensively through Europe during Mary's childhood. Her father was a prominent investment banker and her brother, Alexander, became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
At fifteen, she was admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and four years later moved to Paris where she studied briefly with Jean-Léon Gérôme, but chiefly educated herself by copying at the Louvre. In 1872, already under the artistic influence of Courbet and Manet, she established a studio in Spain, studied the work of Velázquez and Ribera, and produced a series of paintings of local subjects with strongly modeled features placed against dark backgrounds.
In the Salon of 1874, Edgar Degas saw a painting of Cassatt's which prompted him to exclaim, "Voila! There is someone who feels as I do." That same year, Cassatt noticed several Degas pastels in a shop window and wrote, "It changed my life! I saw art then as I wanted to see it." Soon thereafter they met, beginning a friendship and artistic relationship that would last forty years.
Degas introduced her to other members of the emergent impressionist fraternity, and for nine years, as the only American, she continued to exhibit with them and help organize their shows. She always found their company congenial and stimulating, and as her most recent biographer points out, "for the first time Cassatt found people whose biting, critical, opinionated attitudes matched her own."
It is noteworthy that both Cassatt and Degas preferred to call themselves "Independents" rather then "Impressionists"; both always insisted on the integrity of form in their painting, whereas Monet, Pissaro, and others tended to dissolve form into light. Like them, she initially employed a high-keyed palette applied in small touches of contrasting colors. However, over time, Cassatt's style became less painterly, the forms more solidly monumental and placed within clear linear contours.
As a woman in nineteenth-century Paris, she lacked opportunity to depict the diverse subject matter available to her male colleagues: cafés, clubs, bordellos, and even the streets were not comfortably accessible to genteel ladies. The domestic realm, with occasional forays into the theater, became her field of activity. Women and children and family members were generally the subjects of her work, and she became chiefly known for her depictions of mothers and small children. In these "Madonna" paintings she sought to avoid anecdotalism and sentimentality, overcoming the limitations of her subject matter by endowing it with firm structural authority and subtle color interest.
In later years, her eyesight failing, she turned increasingly to pastels, as Degas had done under pressure of the same condition. Like Degas, she became a preeminent exponent of that difficult medium.
In 1872, Cassatt formed a close friendship with a young American in Paris, Louisine Elder, soon to become the wife of H. O. Havemeyer, the reigning "sugar baron" of the American Gilded Age. A woman of discriminating taste and formidable wealth, Louisine turned to her artist friend for guidance in assembling a collection of paintings. In time, they amassed a comprehensive array of impressionist work. Much of the collection was donated to American museums and contributed significantly toward the shaping of public taste and general acceptance of what has since become the most popular of all painting styles.
Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)
cassat.html
Self-portrait
Watercolor on paper, circa 1880, NPG.76.33
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Mary Cassatt was one of this country's premier painters and printmakers in the impressionist style, and was well known for her independence as an artist and as a woman. Born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family, as a child she was well-traveled and exposed to European art. Cassatt determined early on that she wanted to be an artist and embarked on her career at age twenty, when she moved to Europe. As Cassatt's style matured, she found herself attracted to the controversial new movement called impressionism. When mainstream art critics rejected her work, Edgar Degas invited her to join his group of impressionist artists. Although Cassatt adopted impressionism's glowing colors and atmosphere, she preferred stronger patterning and firmer outlines, inspired by Japanese prints (as was Degas, with whom she developed a close friendship). Unlike many of her impressionist colleagues, Cassatt had little interest in landscape painting, instead taking the everyday lives of women as her subjects. Cassatt thought of herself as an American artist, though she visited the United States infrequently. Her exhibitions gave Americans their first taste of impressionist painting.
The Caress (1902), which pictures a mother and two daughters, has an unusual composition: traditionally, family groups were painted in a pyramid shape, but in this painting, the three subjects are grouped together at the same level. The relaxed mood of the painting illustrates Cassatt's talent for portraying subjects in naturalistic poses and settings. The Caress is a good example of one of Cassatt's domestic scenes. She also depicted women in more formal settings, as in Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873). Both of these paintings are in the collections of the National Museum of American Art.
Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla
1873
oil
26 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.
The Banjo Lesson
ca. 1893
Born: Allegheny City, Pennsylvania 1844
Died: Mesnil-Theribus, France 1926
drypoint on paper
plate: 11 3/4 x 9 3/8 in. (29.9 x 23.7 cm)
vs Henry Tanner's Banjo Lesson 1893
cassat.html
Self-portrait
Watercolor on paper, circa 1880, NPG.76.33
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Mary Cassatt was one of this country's premier painters and printmakers in the impressionist style, and was well known for her independence as an artist and as a woman. Born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family, as a child she was well-traveled and exposed to European art. Cassatt determined early on that she wanted to be an artist and embarked on her career at age twenty, when she moved to Europe. As Cassatt's style matured, she found herself attracted to the controversial new movement called impressionism. When mainstream art critics rejected her work, Edgar Degas invited her to join his group of impressionist artists. Although Cassatt adopted impressionism's glowing colors and atmosphere, she preferred stronger patterning and firmer outlines, inspired by Japanese prints (as was Degas, with whom she developed a close friendship). Unlike many of her impressionist colleagues, Cassatt had little interest in landscape painting, instead taking the everyday lives of women as her subjects. Cassatt thought of herself as an American artist, though she visited the United States infrequently. Her exhibitions gave Americans their first taste of impressionist painting.
The Caress (1902), which pictures a mother and two daughters, has an unusual composition: traditionally, family groups were painted in a pyramid shape, but in this painting, the three subjects are grouped together at the same level. The relaxed mood of the painting illustrates Cassatt's talent for portraying subjects in naturalistic poses and settings. The Caress is a good example of one of Cassatt's domestic scenes. She also depicted women in more formal settings, as in Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873). Both of these paintings are in the collections of the National Museum of American Art.
The Caress
1902
oil
32 7/8 x 27 3/8 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3832
1902
oil
32 7/8 x 27 3/8 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3832
| The only American to exhibit with the French impressionists, Mary Cassatt became known for her many paintings of mothers and children. Roughly patterned on Italian Renaissance paintings of Madonna, the Christ child, and John the Baptist, The Caress won prizes from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. However, Cassatt refused both, sticking to her principles of “no jury, no medals, no awards,” in reaction against the jury system of the Paris Salon. |
1873
oil
26 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Victoria Dreyfus
http://americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=2248
Mary Cassatt spent a few months in Spain in the early 1870s. She went first to Madrid, where she copied the paintings of the Spanish masters, then established a studio in Seville. She made a series of paintings of Spanish life that emphasized the beauty and dress of the local women. This piece was exhibited at the 1874 Paris Salon under the title Ida, where it attracted the attention of French impressionist Edgar Degas. On seeing the work of Cassatt for the first time, Degas commented, “C’est vrai. Voilá quelqu’un qui sent comme moi” (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).
In this informal, introspective portrait, the simplicity of the sitter's pose and the background contrast with the bold, expressive strokes that enliven the embroidered veil. Mary Cassatt traveled to Seville, Spain, in 1872, lured by its picturesque scenery, low cost of living, and the opportunity to study Spanish masters such as Velázquez.
Sara in a Green Bonnet
ca. 1901
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3834
oil on canvas
16 1/2 x 13 5/8 in. (42.0 x 34.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.11
Renwick Gallery
Mary Cassatt spent a few months in Spain in the early 1870s. She went first to Madrid, where she copied the paintings of the Spanish masters, then established a studio in Seville. She made a series of paintings of Spanish life that emphasized the beauty and dress of the local women. This piece was exhibited at the 1874 Paris Salon under the title Ida, where it attracted the attention of French impressionist Edgar Degas. On seeing the work of Cassatt for the first time, Degas commented, “C’est vrai. Voilá quelqu’un qui sent comme moi” (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).
In this informal, introspective portrait, the simplicity of the sitter's pose and the background contrast with the bold, expressive strokes that enliven the embroidered veil. Mary Cassatt traveled to Seville, Spain, in 1872, lured by its picturesque scenery, low cost of living, and the opportunity to study Spanish masters such as Velázquez.
Sara in a Green Bonnet
ca. 1901
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3834
oil on canvas
16 1/2 x 13 5/8 in. (42.0 x 34.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.11
Renwick Gallery
To review all her art at the Smithsonian, including copies after her work.
The Banjo Lessonca. 1893
Born: Allegheny City, Pennsylvania 1844
Died: Mesnil-Theribus, France 1926
drypoint on paper
plate: 11 3/4 x 9 3/8 in. (29.9 x 23.7 cm)
vs Henry Tanner's Banjo Lesson 1893
Fun game
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