Mary Cassatt Biography
Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926) is known for her perceptive depictions of women and children. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Cassatt settled in Paris in 1875 Mary Cassatt was one of the few American artists active in the nineteenth-century French impressionist art. Mary Cassatt was the first great female American painters invited to show her work in the now-celebrated Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. Cassatt's pictures of mothers and children of the late 1880s and early 1890s were created when she had begun to present her subjects as symbolic of universal ideas. she developed a distinctive style that combined a light, bright palette with the strong contours. Cassatt frequently chose as models her family and friends posing in their authentic styles. The many paintings, pastels, and prints in which Cassatt depicted
children being bathed, dressed, read to, held, or nursed reflect the most advanced 19th-century ideas about raising children. In Paris, she studied with prominent academic painters and independently at the Louvre. She went back to the United States for a short period, then returned to Europe in 1871, spending her time painting and copying the old masters in museums in Italy, Spain, and Belgium. She particularly admired the work of Degas, and a close working friendship developed between them. They both came from affluent upper-class backgrounds.Their work was based on similar visual sensibilities and common interest in Japanese woodblock prints, which had become extremely popular in France at the time. |
