A biography of mary cassatt

Follow Little Girl in a Blue Armchair by Mary Cassatt Mary Cassatt is a natural choice when introducing children to great art since she often used children and babies as the subject of her paintings.

Katherine Cassatt, educated and well-read, had a profound influence on her daughter. The family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvaniathen to the Philadelphia area, where she started her schooling at the age of six. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music.

Also in the exhibition were Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarroboth of whom were later her colleagues and mentors. As such, Cassatt and her network of friends were lifelong advocates of equal rights for the sexes.

She later said, "There was no teaching" at the Academy. Female students could not use live models, until somewhat later, and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts. At that time, no degree was granted. The museum also served as a social place for Frenchmen and American female students, who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized.

In this manner, fellow artist and friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and married famed academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

InCassatt also studied with artist Thomas Couturewhose subjects were mostly romantic and urban. In one of her paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted for the first time by the selection jury for the Paris Salon.

With Elizabeth Jane Gardnerwhose work was also accepted by the jury that year, Cassatt was one of two American women to first exhibit in the Salon. Returning to the United States in the late summer of —as the Franco-Prussian War was starting—Cassatt lived with her family in Altoona.

Her father continued to resist her chosen vocation, and paid for her basic needs, but not her art supplies. She was also dismayed at the lack of paintings to study while staying at her summer residence.

Cassatt even considered giving up art, as she was determined to make an independent living. She attracted much favorable notice in Parma and was supported and encouraged by the art community there: Inshe made the decision to take up residence in France.

She was joined by her sister Lydia who shared an apartment with her. Cassatt opened a studio in Paris. She was blunt in her comments, as reported by Sartain, who wrote: She had quarrels with Sartain, who thought Cassatt too outspoken and self-centered, and eventually they parted.

Out of her distress and self-criticism, Cassatt decided that she needed to move away from genre paintings and onto more fashionable subjects, in order to attract portrait commissions from American socialites abroad, but that attempt bore little fruit at first.

The Impressionists also known as the "Independents" or "Intransigents" had no formal manifesto and varied considerably in subject matter and technique. They tended to prefer plein air painting and the application of vibrant color in separate strokes with little pre-mixing, which allows the eye to merge the results in an "impressionistic" manner.

The Impressionists had been receiving the wrath of the critics for several years. Henry Bacon, a friend of the Cassatts, thought that the Impressionists were so radical that they were "afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of the eye".

I saw art then as I wanted to see it. She felt comfortable with the Impressionists and joined their cause enthusiastically, declaring:Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born to a comfortably upper-middle-class family: her father was a successful stockbroker, and her mother belonged to a prosperous banking family.

The Cassatts lived in France and Germany from to , giving the young Mary Nationality: American. Mary Cassatt: Mary Cassatt, American painter and printmaker who was part of the group of Impressionists working in and around Paris. She took as her subjects almost exclusively women and children.

Cassatt was the daughter of a banker and lived in Europe for five years as a young girl. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this biography of Mary Cassatt.

Mary Cassatt - Wikipedia

Written in a very accessible style, it draws the reader into Cassatt's life much like a novel. Cassatt has long been one of my favorite artists but this book brought her to life as a real person, an artist surely but also a well rounded human being who chose her art over a traditional woman's life.4/5(24).

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Mary Cassatt, (born May 22, , Allegheny City [now part of Pittsburgh], Pennsylvania, U.S.—died June 14, , Château de Beaufresne, near Paris, France), American painter and printmaker who was part of the group of Impressionists working in and around Paris.

She took as her subjects almost exclusively women and children. Cassatt was the daughter of a banker and lived in Europe for five.