Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
1844 - 1926
American painter and printmaker, active in France. Having settled in Paris, she became a member of the Impressionist circle. The quality of her draughtsmanship is evident in all the media in which she worked, notably pastel. She is particularly associated with the theme of mother and child.
1. Life and work.
Daughter of a Pittsburgh banker, Mary Cassatt received a cultured upbringing and spent five years abroad as a child (1851–5). In 1860, at the age of 16, she began classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and in 1866 sailed again for Europe. During the next four years she studied in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Charles Chaplin, in Ecouen with Paul Soyer (1823–1903), in Villiers-le-Bel with Thomas Couture and in Rome with Charles Bellay (1826–1900). She concentrated mainly on figure painting, often posing her models in picturesque local costume. When she returned to Europe after 16 months in the USA (1870–71), she painted and copied in the museums of Parma, Madrid, Seville, Antwerp and Rome, finally settling in Paris in 1874. Until 1878 she worked mainly as a portrait and genre painter, specializing in scenes of women in Parisian interiors. She exhibited regularly in the USA, particularly in Philadelphia, and had paintings accepted in the Paris Salons of 1868, 1870 and 1872–6.
Cassatt’s study of Velázquez and Rubens, coupled with her interest in the modern masters Couture, Courbet and Degas, caused her to question the popular Salon masters of the 1870s and to develop her own increasingly innovative style. This led to rejection of some of her Salon entries in 1875 and 1877 but also prompted Degas to invite her to exhibit with the Impressionists. She made her début with them at their fourth annual exhibition (1879), by which time she had mastered the Impressionist style and was accepted as a fully fledged member by artists and critics alike. She went on to participate in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880, 1881 and 1886.
In 1877, when her parents and older sister Lydia arrived to settle with her in Paris, she exchanged her youthful lifestyle, living alone in her studio, for a more family-orientated existence. Their more spacious and comfortable accommodation also encouraged Cassatt’s two brothers and their families to make frequent visits from Philadelphia. Family members often figure in Cassatt’s Impressionist portraits and scenes of daily life during this period (e.g. Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly, 1880; New York, Met.).
Cassatt began to revise her Impressionist style in the 1880s, and after the last Impressionist exhibition (1886) she developed a refined draughtsmanship in her pastels, prints and oil paintings. After exhibiting with the new Société des Peintres-Graveurs in 1889 and 1890, she had her first individual exhibition of colour prints and paintings in 1891 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris. In 1892 she was invited to paint a large tympanum mural, Modern Woman, for the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893). Although the mural itself does not survive, many paintings (e.g. Nude Baby Reaching for an Apple, 1893; Richmond, VA, Mus. F.A.), prints (e.g. Gathering Fruit, drypoint with aquatint, c. 1895) and pastels (e.g. Banjo Lesson, 1894; Richmond, VA Mus. F.A.) based on Cassatt’s mural designs reflect her concept of modern woman ‘plucking the fruits of knowledge or science’. She exhibited these in her first major retrospective exhibition in 1895 at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris and again in 1895 at his gallery in New York.
Cassatt’s success in Europe and the USA was such that in 1894 she was able to purchase the Château de Beaufresne in Le Mesnil-Théribus (c. 90 km north-west of Paris) from the sale of her work. Thereafter she alternated between Paris and the country, with a few months every winter in the south of France. She increasingly concentrated on the mother-and-child theme and on studies of women and young girls, often turning to the Old Masters for inspiration (see fig.). For this work she was recognized on both continents, and, in addition to receiving a number of awards, including the Légion d’honneur in 1904, she was called ‘the most eminent of all living American women painters’ (Current Lit., 1909, p. 167). She spent much of her time during these years helping her American friends build collections of avant-garde French art and works by Old Masters. Those she advised included Henry and Louisine Havemeyer, Mrs Montgomery J. Sears, Bertha Honoré Palmer and James Stillman.
Cassatt painted until 1915 and exhibited her latest work that year in the Suffrage Loan Exhibition of Old Masters and Works by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt at the Knoedler Gallery, New York; but soon afterwards cataracts in both eyes forced her into retirement. She continued to be actively interested in art, however, and until her death she vigorously expressed her own views and opinions to the many young artists who visited her seeking advice.
2. Working methods, technique and subject-matter.
Cassatt’s own experimentation and her openness to new ideas caused her style to change many times during her long career. In her early years (1860–78) she practised a painterly genre style in dark, rich colours as in A Musical Party (1874; Paris, Mus. Carnavalet); during her Impressionist period (1879–86) she used a pastel palette and quick brushstrokes in such works as Cup of Tea (c. 1880; New York, Met.); in her mature period (1887–1900) she developed a style that was more finished and dependent on abstract linear design, for instance in The Bath (1893; Chicago, IL, A. Inst. ) and Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror) (c. 1899; New York, Met.); and in her late period (1900–26) she often used colour combinations with a sombre cast, as in The Caress (1903; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.).
As a student and young artist, Cassatt avoided the academic emphasis on drawing and concentrated instead on painting techniques. But as her career progressed, particularly after 1879 when she took up pastels and printmaking, she developed a refined and original drawing style that blended European and oriental effects (see fig.). Her first efforts in printmaking were in a collaboration with Degas, Pissarro and others to produce a journal combining art criticism and original prints. Although the journal, Le Jour et la nuit, never appeared, Cassatt went on to finish several complex prints in etching, aquatint and drypoint, such as The Visitor (softground, aquatint and drypoint, c. 1880; Breeskin, 1948, no. 34). In the late 1880s she turned to drypoint for a spare and elegant effect, as in Baby’s Back (c. 1889; B. 128). Her greatest achievement in printmaking, however, was the group of 18 colour prints she produced during the 1890s. The first ten were completed and exhibited as a set in 1891 and are highly prized for their skilful use of aquatint, etching and drypoint and for Cassatt’s hand-inking and wiping of the plates for each print. Prints from this set, such as The Letter (drypoint and aquatint, 1890–91; B. 146), show her successful synthesis of the abstract design of Japanese colour prints and the atmospheric qualities of Western art.
Cassatt’s pastels are equally important to her development as an artist (see fig.). Although she used pastel as a sketching tool from the first, it was not until she joined the Impressionist circle that she began to produce major finished works in this medium. Pastel became increasingly popular in both Europe and the USA in the 1870s and 1880s, and Cassatt was one of the first to exploit the properties of pastel in conveying the vibrancy of ‘modern’ life. As in oil, she tailored her application of the pastel pigment to fit her changing style: exuberant strokes and rich colours during her Impressionist phase gave way to a calmer, more monumental style (exemplified by Banjo Lesson) as she matured. In the 1890s she returned often to the study of pastel techniques of 18th-century masters, particularly Maurice-Quentin de La Tour.
In the late 1880s Cassatt began to specialize in the mother-and-child theme (e.g. Mother and Child, 1897; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). This developed from her interest in the monumental figure and the depiction of modern life and was also in tune with late 19th-century Symbolism. She soon became identified with the theme and continues to be considered one of its greatest interpreters. [Nancy Mowll Mathews. "Cassatt, Mary." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 4, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T014598.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
French, 1864 - 1901
