Monday, June 11, 2018

Artist of the day, June 11: Mary Cassatt, American painter, printmaker

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 – 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, but lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot.

Mary Cassatt started formal training as a painter in 1861. In 1865, she took her first trip to Europe, where she would remain for the next four years, traveling and studying in Paris, Rome, and Madrid. In 1868, her painting A Mandolin Player became her first work to be accepted by the Paris Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Edgar Degas saw Cassatt’s work at the Salon, and in 1877 he asked her to exhibit with the Impressionists. Cassatt’s painting style and subject matter changed greatly because of her association with Impressionism. She abandoned colorful costume genre depictions in favor of scenes from contemporary life.

Two years later, Cassatt and other artists, including Degas, Félix Braquemond, and Camille Pissarro, experimented with graphic techniques in the hopes of creating a new print journal. Although the journal never came to fruition, this work became very important to Cassatt in her development as a printmaker and a painter.

Cassatt's work combined the light color palette and loose brushwork of Impressionism with compositions influenced by Japanese art as well as by European Old Masters, and she worked in a variety of media throughout her career. This versatility helped to establish her professional success at a time when very few women were regarded as serious artists.

Cassatt's art typically depicted domestic settings, the world to which she herself (as a respectable woman) was restricted, rather than the more public spaces that her male contemporaries were free to inhabit. Her material was occasionally dismissed as quintessentially "feminine," yet most critics realized that she brought considerable technical skill and psychological insight to her subject matter. Through her business acumen and her friendships and professional relationships with artists, dealers, and collectors on both sides of the Atlantic, Cassatt became a key figure in the turn-of-the-century art world and helped to establish the taste for Impressionist art in her native United States.

Throughout the latter half of the 1880s, Cassatt produced etchings and drypoints of members of her family. Her failing eyesight prevented her from working for the last 15 years of her life, but because she had been an exceptionally prolific printmaker, she produced more than 220 prints during the course of her career.


Mrs Mary Cassatt self-portrait

Memorial on the facade of 10 rue de Marignan

1868, A Mandolin Player

1868, Child Drinking Milk

1869, Two Seated Women

1871, Sketch of Mrs. Currey Sketch of Mr. Cassatt

1872, During Carnival

1872, Portrait Of A Woman

1873, Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter

1873, Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla

1873, Toreador

1874, Musical Party

1875, Peasant Woman Peeling an Orange

1876, Portrait of Miss Cassatt, holding the cards

1877, Portrait of a Lady (Miss Ellison)

1877, The Reader

1878, In the Loge

1878, Portrait of the artist, Mary Cassatt

1878, The Reader

1879, Mother Combing Her Child's Hair

1879, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge

1880, Elsie Cassatt Holding a Big Dog

1880, Miss Mary Ellison

1880, The Cup of Tea

1881, Susan Seated Outdoors Wearing a Purple Hat

1882, Woman in Black

1883, Young Girl at a Window

1884, Children on the Beach

1885, Lady at the Tea Table

1886, Child in Straw Hat

1887-88, Lady and child

1889, Baby in His Mother`s arms, sucking his finger

1890, Maternité

1890, Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet

1891, Baby`s First Cess

1892-93, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant)

1893, The Child's Bath

1894, Summertime

1895, Nurse Reading to a Little Girl

1896, Maternal Caress

1896, Maternal kiss

1897, Breakfast in Bed

1898, Mother and Child Before a Pool

1898, The Pink Sash

1899, Madame Meerson and Her Daughter

1900, Jules Being Dried by His Mother

1900, Young Mother Sewing

1901, Head of Sara in a Bonnet Looking Left

1902, Mère et enfant (Reine Lefebre and Margot before a Window)

1903, Head of Simone in a Large Plumes Hat, Looking Left

1903, Margot in Blue

1904, Dorothy in a Very Large Bonnet and a Dark Coat

1905, Sketch of Ellen My Cassatt in a Big Blue Hat

1906, Mother and Two Children

1908, Bust of Francoise Looking Down

1908, Francoise Wearing a Big White Hat

1909, Woman at Her Toilette

1910, Auguste Reading to Her Daughter

1911, Portrait of Mie Louise Durand Ruel

1913, The Chrochet Lesson

1914, Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun

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