Female Artists: Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, (Impressionism) 

Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker, born to an upper middle-class family, who lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists.  

Cassatt is famous for her Impressionist paintings showing the social and private lives of everyday women of the late 19th century, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. 

Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the age of 15 but she was impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronising attitude of the male students and teachers and she decided to study the old masters on her own.  

Despite her family's strong objections (her father declared he would rather see his daughter dead than living abroad as a "bohemian"), Cassatt left for Paris in 1866. She began her study with private art lessons in the Louvre, where she studied and copy the masterpieces. She continued to study and paint in relative obscurity until 1868, when one of her portraits was selected at the prestigious Paris Salon, an annual exhibition run by the French government. With her father's disapproving words echoing in her ears, Cassatt submitted the well-received painting under the name Mary Stevenson. 

Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often rejected by the Salon unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, but she would not flirt with jurors to gain attention and favour. Her cynicism grew when one of the two pictures she submitted in 1875 was refused by the jury, only to be accepted the following year after she darkened the background.   

She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of the three great ladies of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879, Diego Martelli compared her to Degas, as they both sought to depict movement, light, and design in the most modern sense. 

Mary Cassatt depicted the New Woman of the 19th century (women who challenged society's limits, seeking to exercise more control over their lives, both socially and economically) from the woman's perspective. As a successful, highly trained woman who never married, Cassatt personified the concept of the New Woman, drawing from the influence of her intelligent and active mother, Katherine Cassatt, who believed in educating women to be knowledgeable and socially active.  

After 1886, Cassatt no longer identified herself with any art movement and experimented with a variety of techniques. 

Portrait of a Lady (The Artist’s Mother Reading Le Figaro), 1878