Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. Though born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania—now part of Pittsburgh’s North Side—she spent most of her adult years in France. There, she became a friend of Edgar Degas and showed her work alongside the Impressionists. Her art frequently focused on the social and private lives of women, especially the close relationships between mothers and their children.

The critic Gustave Geffroy named her one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism, alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879, Diego Martelli compared her to Degas, noting that both artists aimed to capture movement, light, and design in a thoroughly modern way. Cassatt also helped introduce Impressionism to American collectors, most notably through her friendship with the Havemeyer family.

Cassatt was born into an upper-middle-class family. Her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), worked as a successful stockbroker and land speculator. The family name was originally Cossart, tracing back to French Huguenot Jacques Cossart, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1662. Her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family. Well-educated and well-read, Katherine had a deep influence on her daughter. Louisine Havemeyer, a lifelong friend of Cassatt, wrote in her memoirs that anyone who knew Cassatt’s mother would understand that Mary inherited her ability from her alone. Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. She was one of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Her brother Alexander Johnston Cassatt later became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The family moved east, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where Cassatt began school at age six.

Travel was considered essential to a good education in Cassatt’s household. She spent five years in Europe, visiting London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad, she learned German and French and had her first drawing and music lessons. She likely first encountered the work of French artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, and Gustave Courbet at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855. Also exhibiting there were Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, who would later become her colleagues and mentors.

Although her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at age 15. Her parents may have been concerned about her exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some male students. Cassatt and her circle became lifelong advocates for equal rights for women. About 20% of the students were female, but most saw art as a socially useful skill; few were as determined as Cassatt to make it a career. She studied from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War. Thomas Eakins was among her fellow students; he later resigned as the academy’s director. Frustrated by the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitudes of male students and teachers, Cassatt decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said there was “no teaching” at the academy. Female students could not use live models until later, and training mainly involved drawing from casts.

Cassatt ended her studies without receiving a degree. After overcoming her father’s objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends as chaperones. Women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, so she applied to study privately with masters from the school. She was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and exotic subjects. (A few months later, Gérôme also accepted Eakins as a student.) Cassatt supplemented her training by copying daily in the Louvre, for which she obtained the required permit—a system used to control the “copyists,” usually low-paid women, who filled the museum making copies for sale. The Louvre also served as a social space for French and American female students, who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend the cafes where the avant-garde gathered. In this way, fellow artist and friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and married famed academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Toward the end of 1866, Cassatt joined a painting class taught by Charles Joshua Chaplin, a genre artist. In 1868, she also studied with Thomas Couture, whose subjects were mostly romantic and urban. On trips to the countryside, students drew from life, especially peasants going about their daily routines. That same year, one of her paintings, *A Mandoline Player*, was accepted by the selection jury for the Paris Salon for the first time. Along with Elizabeth Jane Gardner, whose work was also accepted that year, Cassatt became one of two American women to exhibit in the Salon. *A Mandoline Player* is in the Romantic style of Corot and Couture, and it is one of only two paintings from her first decade as an artist that are still documented today.

The French art scene was changing, with radical artists like Courbet and Édouard Manet trying to break away from accepted Academic tradition, while the Impressionists were just forming. Cassatt’s friend Eliza Haldeman wrote home that artists “are leaving the Academy style and each seeking a new way, consequently just now everything is Chaos.” Cassatt, however, continued working in the traditional manner, submitting works to the Salon for more than ten years.