Known for her perceptive depictions of women
and children, Mary Cassatt was one of the few American artists
active in the nineteenth-century French avant-garde.
Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania to a prominent
Pittsburgh family, she traveled extensively through Europe with
her parents and siblings while a child.
Between 1860 and 1864 she attended the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. At the age of twenty-two
Cassatt went abroad, studying old master paintings in European
museums. In Paris, she studied with prominent academic painters
and independently at the Louvre. Returning to the United States
for a short period, Cassatt went back to Europe in 1871, spending
her time painting and copying the old masters in museums in Italy,
Spain, and Belgium.
In 1874 she settled permanently in Paris. Although
she had several works accepted for exhibition by the tradition-bound
French Salon, her artistic aims aligned her with the avant-garde
painters of the time.
In 1877, Edgar Degas invited her invited her
to exhibit with his fellow impressionists. One of the works she
showed was The Cup of Tea (1879, Metropolitan Museum, New York
City), a portrait of her sister Lydia in luminescent shades of
pink.
She particularly admired the work of Degas, as
well as that of Manet and Courbet. A close working relationship
developed between Cassatt and Degas.
Beginning in 1882 Cassatt's style took a new
turn. Influenced, like Degas, by Japanese woodcuts, she began
to emphasize line rather than form or mass and experimented with
asymmetric composition-as in The Boating Party (1893, National
Gallery, Washington, D.C.)-and informal, natural gestures and
positions. Portrayals of mothers and children in intimate relationship
and domestic settings, such as The Mirror (1900?, Brooklyn Museum,
New York City), became her theme. Her portraits were not commissioned.
Instead, she used members of her own family as subjects.
With loss of sight she was no longer able to
paint after 1914.
During her long residence in France, Cassatt
sent paintings back to exhibitions in the United States. Thus,
hers were among the first impressionist works seen in this country.
In advising wealthy American patrons on what to acquire, she also
played a crucial role in the formation of some of the most important
collections of impressionist art in this country.
