SegPlay^® PC Pattern Set Contents

Mary Cassatt - American Female Impressionist

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) is considered to be the most famous American Female Impressionist painter. Generally known as a painter of mothers and children in domestic and interior scenes, her contemporary style gave them a progressive viewpoint and a new place in modern culture. Our collection includes 21 of her most recognizable paintings including "The Boating Party", " Children on the Beach", "Lady at the Tea Table", "The Toreador", and "The Child's Bath". There are also 2 self-portraits included.

Mary was born into an affluent and cultured family in Pennsylvania. Her father was a wealthy businessman of French ancestry and her mother came from a banking family. Mary's parents were firm believers in education and when she was seven years old the family took their children on a four-year stay in Europe. Mary saw London, Paris and Berlin before she was ten and learned to speak French and German.

The family's foreign travels left a lasting impression on Cassatt and, at the age of sixteen, she announced that she wanted to study art, a revolutionary move for a woman of her times who was expected simply to marry well and raise a family. But Mary managed to convince her parents and in 1861 was admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied for four years before returning to Europe with her mother, settling in Paris in 1875.

Cassatt's early years in Paris were the happiest time of her life. Not only was the French capital the center of the art world but the city itself was changing and influencing the artists living there, who now chose to celebrate modern life in their subjects.

Soon after settling in the city, Mary Cassatt came to know the Impressionist painter, Edgar Degas, who was to remain a lifelong friend. He had considerable influence on her work and introduced her to other painters of the group. Under their influence Mary began to use light colors and started working in pastels; her subject matter changed and she painted contemporary women going about their daily lives.

Degas invited her to exhibit in the Impressionist show of 1879 and she remained part of the Impressionist group until 1886. Cassatt was instrumental in introducing Impressionist art into the United States: she not only bought her friends' paintings when they were in need, but she also used her connections with wealthy American families to encourage them to buy Impressionist art. Some of the great Impressionist collections now in American museums are a result of her intervention. Her own paintings were also exhibited in the USA and were well reviewed by American critics.

In the mid-1880s Mary's style evolved and she began to move away from Impressionism and experiment with other media, but she always remained faithful to her theme of mother and child. The 1890s were Cassatt's most important years. Not only was her art gaining recognition, but she was also an advisor to important American art collectors. She became an accomplished printmaker during that decade and in 1891 held her first one-woman show at a private gallery in Paris. The works she exhibited there used bolder colors and were strongly influenced by Japanese prints that had been shown at an exhibition in Paris in 1890.

Cassatt continued to create many paintings and pastels into the early years of the twentieth century, but after a disastrous visit to Egypt in 1912, during which her brother died, her health began to deteriorate. Unable to work due to failing eyesight she retired to the South of France during the First World War where she lived in seclusion and almost total blindness until her death in 1926. The French government awarded her the Légion d'Honneur in 1904 as recognition of her contribution to the arts.

Copyright (C) 2008 Segmation.com. All rights reserved.

You may reproduce this article only in its whole and only by including this copyright. If reproducing it electronically, you must include a link to www.segmation.com.