Mary Cassatt: Female Impressionist

Mary Cassatt was born in Pennsylvania in 1844. As a child she travelled with her family and lived in Paris. That time in Paris greatly influenced her. When her family returned to the United States she surprised them with the news that she wanted to become an artist. It is unusual given the time that a young woman would even think about a career but Mary did and her parents gave in grudgingly and sent her to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1866 she returned to Paris. She studied the masters in the Louvre. In those days, women were permitted to enter the Louvre, buy a permit, and study or copy the work of the great masters and sell them outside on the street. Through her studies at the Louvre, Mary met fellow artists William Bouguereau and Elizabeth Gardner.
She studied with artist Charles Chaplin and they traveled to the countryside to paint. Her painting The Mandolin Player was accepted by the prestigious Salon in 1872.
Mary met Edgar Degas and he staged a show of his work and her other work that had been refused by the Salon. The name of the show was Les Salon des Refuses. Through Degas’ many contacts, Mary eventually met other Impressionists: Monet, Renoir and Pissarro.

Mary and Edgar had a great friendship and he taught her about light and colour. She was heavily influenced by the Impressionists she met and their influence is shown in her work. She began to paint people. Many people believe that Mary and Edgar were lovers, but there is no proof of this. Mary worked for ten years trying to get more of her work accepted by the Salon, and grew tired of being constantly rejected. Eventually she joined the Impressionists, many who also were never accepted by the Salon. The Paris art scene was changing.

Mary returned the United Sates in 1870. Her father was still very unsupportive and in frustration, she tore up a portrait she had painted of him. She vowed to continue despite having many paintings rejected in New York. A few of her paintings were accepted by a gallery in Chicago but lost in the Great Fire of 1871. The Archbishop of Philadelphia noticed her work and hired her to paint two copies of paintings by Correggio in Italy. He paid her a big advance for her trip and for the work. This was her first big break.

Mary travelled again to Europe and gradually found more success. Her parents came to see her and saw that she would never give up achieving her goal of living from her art. Mary never got married. She knew she would not be able to be a wife and an artist. In 1878, Mary participated in an Impressionist exhibition. She painted three major pieces: Portrait of the Artist (self-portrait), Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, and Reading Le Figaro. In 1886 Mary provided two paintings for the first Impressionist exhibition in the United Sates. Mary had found her own style (she had left the comfort of belonging to a movement) and now began to enjoy her success in the 1890’s. Her success was somewhat overshadowed by her famous brother, who was the President of the Pennsylvania railway and his death in 1906 was very saddenning to her. They had been close and she had never been jealous of him.

Mary Travelled to Egypt in 1910, she was buoyed by the beauty of the culture but a number of maladies made her retire in 1914. She died in 1926, but not before she was awarded the Legion d’Honneur for her contribution to the art world.

By Melissa Montgomery