5 facts about Mary Cassatt, the only American Impressionist painter
Mary Cassatt was one of only few women impressionist painters, and the only American to fully integrate Impressionism. Cassatt’s practice focused on materializing the interior life of women through intimate or quotidian moments, blending impressionism with touches of Japanese printmaking.
1844
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was from an upper-class family in Pennsylvania but spent most of her adult years living and working in France. She trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, one of the few institutions where women were allowed to study. In Paris, she copied the masterpieces of the Louvre. She also traveled to Europe to discover the greatest museums (the Uffizi in Florence, the Prado in Madrid…). Her artistic education was consequently extensive when she settled permanently in Paris after the Commune, in 1871.
1877–1890s
Her friendship with Edgar Degas led to her exhibiting with the Impressionists, one of only a few women to do so. The two painters had studios close together. They had a lot in common: they shared similar tastes in art and literature, had studied painting in Italy, and both never married.
1880s-1890s
In the early 1880s, Cassatt had discovered her own signature theme: maternity. It is not easy to identify the subject of the painter. Is it the mother? Is it the intimate duo, welded together by tenderness? Cassatt was never married, and she had no children, but she knew how to convey the tenderness binding both beings, often represented in everyday activities such as bathing. However, Cassatt’s aesthetic style is clearly Impressionist: her vibrant palette, her vigorous brushstrokes, the use of light and her taste for Japanese prints.
1890s-1910s
She advocated for women’s suffrage and girls’ education. An outspoken feminist, M. Cassatt was commissioned a monumental picture, Modern Woman, for the main hall of the Woman’s Building at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
1890s-1910s
She served as an advisor to a number of American private collectors, bringing many important Impressionist works to the United States. The movement was struggling to gain recognition in France, despite the efforts of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. She provided him with assistance as he set out in 1883 to open a gallery in the United States to sell Impressionist works.
Study for The Banjo (about 1894) is sold as a digital lithography on laCollection.io as part of the ‘French Pastels from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’ NFT collection in partnership with the MFA Boston, from August 11 to August 15 2022. The original is exhibited only once a decade due to the fragility of the powdery pigment and the light sensitivity of the pastel paper. Click here.
