Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), American painter, who lived and worked in France as an important member of the impressionist group (painters who aimed to represent the effects of light on objects; See Impressionism). Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. In 1861 she began to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but proclaimed her independence by leaving in 1866 to paint in France. By 1872, after studying in the major museums of Europe, her style began to mature, and she settled in Paris. There her work attracted the attention of the French painter Edgar Degas, who invited her to exhibit with his fellow impressionists. One of the works she showed was The Cup of Tea (1879, Metropolitan Museum, New York City), a portrait of her sister Lydia in luminescent shades of pink. Beginning in 1882 Cassatt's style took a new turn. Influenced, like Degas, by Japanese woodcuts, she began to emphasize line rather than form or mass and experimented with asymmetric composition—as in The Boating Party (1893, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.)—and informal, natural gestures and positions. Portrayals of mothers and children in intimate relationship and domestic settings, such as The Mirror (1900?, Brooklyn Museum, New York City), became her theme. Her portraits were not commissioned. Instead, she used members of her own family as subjects.

France awarded Cassatt the Legion of Honor in 1904. Although she had been instrumental in advising the first American collectors of impressionist works, recognition came more slowly in the United States. With the loss of her sight she was no longer able to paint after 1914.