Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
Mary Cassatt was born in 1844 in Pennsylvania and spent her childhood there until 1851 when she moved to Europe with her mother where she studied in a number of cities until 1858. She returned to the states to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865 but decided France was best suited for her career and she moved there in 1866 for the remainder of her life. Her first major exhibit was the Paris Salon of 1868 and four Salon exhibitions followed. Cassatt’s Salon exhibitions attracted Edgar Degas who became a close friend and whom invited her to join the artists dedicated to the “new painting”, the Impressionists.
Like Degas, Cassatt showed mastery of drawing and both artists preferred unposed asymmetrical compositions. From 1879 to 1886 she was one of only three women to exhibit with the Impressionists, and the only American woman. In 1878 fellow artist Julian Weir asked Cassatt to exhibit with the Society of American Artists. Cassett sent him two paintings which were among the first Impressionist works to be shown in America, and these paintings received high praises.
Living with aged parents and being more confined than a male Impressionist painter Cassatt used her family members as models and thus developed a new style of subject matter. Even though she remained single and childless in her life she achieved her greatest success with the depiction of maternity. It was in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition that Cassatt first displayed pictures of the mother and child theme for which she is best known today.
Throughout the years Cassatt became increasingly involved with women’s rights. She painted “Modern Woman”, a mural for the 1893 Chicago World’s fair. With the help of Edgar Degas she organized an exhibition in 1915 to benefit Women’s Suffrage even though the year before she had given up painting due to poor eyesight. When Cassatt died in 1926 she was honored by a number of memorial exhibitions.