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Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. more...

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Cassatt (pronounced ca-SAHT) specialized in painting the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

Early life

Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh, she was the daughter of a well-to-do businessman. Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; before she was 10 years old she had already visited many of the capitals of Europe, including London, Paris, and Berlin.

Despite her family's objections to her becoming a professional artist, she began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1861-1865). Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own and in 1866 she moved to Paris.

Returning to the United States at the outset of the Franco-Prussian War, Cassatt lived with her family, but art supplies and models were difficult to find in the small town. Her father continued to resist her vocation, and paid only for her basic needs, but not her art supplies. She returned to Europe in 1871 when the archbishop of Pittsburgh commissioned her to paint copies of paintings in Italy, after which she traveled about Europe.

Impressionism

By 1872, after studying independently in the major European museums, her style matured, and in Paris she studied with Camille Pissarro.

The jury accepted her first painting for the Paris Salon in 1872. The Salon critics claimed that her colors were too bright and that her portraits were too accurate to be flattering to the subjects.

Upon seeing pastels by Edgar Degas in an art dealer's window, though, she knew she was not alone in her rebellion against the Salon. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it." She met Degas in 1874, and he invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists and her work hung in the 1879 Impressionist show. An active member of the Impressionist circle until 1886, she remained friends with Degas and Berthe Morisot. Like Degas, Cassatt became extremely proficient in the use of pastel, eventually painting many of her most important works in this medium.

Shortly after her triumphs with the Impressionists, Cassatt quit painting to care for her mother and sister, who fell ill after moving to Paris in 1877. Her sister died in 1882, but her mother regained her health, and Cassatt resumed painting by the mid-1880s.

Read more at Wikipedia.org