Mary Cassatt
gigatos | May 20, 2022
Summary
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844-June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. Although born in Pennsylvania, she spent much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and joined the Impressionist movement. Cassatt primarily painted images depicting the social and private lives of women, with special emphasis on the bonds between them and their children.
Mary Cassatt was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of “the three great ladies” of Impressionism along with Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot.
Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now Pittsburgh, into an upper middle-class family. His father, Robert Simpson Cassatt (later just Cassatt) was a successful stockbroker, a descendant of the Frenchman Jacques Cossart, who had come to New Amsterdam in 1662. His mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a family of bankers. Katherine, an educated reader, had a great influence on her daughter. Louisine Havemeyer, a friend of Mary”s, wrote in her memoirs, “Anyone who had the privilege of meeting Mary Cassatt”s mother knew at once that it was she and she alone who had inherited her ability.” Cassatt was a distant cousin of the artist Robert Henri. Mary was one of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. One of her brothers, Alexander Johnston Cassatt, became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her family moved constantly, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and then to the Philadelphia area, where, as usual, she began her schooling at the age of six.
Cassatt grew up in an affluent environment where travel was considered an integral part of education; he spent five years in Europe and visited important capitals such as London, Paris and Berlin. During his stays abroad he learned German, French and had his first lessons in drawing and music.It is likely that his first contact with French artists Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Courbet was at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855. Also at the exhibition were Degas and Pissarro, who would later become his colleagues and mentors.
Impatient with the slow pace of learning and the condescending attitude of the men at the Academy, he decided to study on his own. Cassatt would later claim that “teaching did not exist” at the Academy. The students were forbidden to use live models (until a little later) so their primary training was based, primarily, on casts.
Cassatt decided to end her studies before obtaining a degree. After overcoming her father”s objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends as chaperones.Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, Mary applied for private lessons with teachers at the school and was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly respected teacher known for his realistic technique and his treatment of exotic subjects.A few months later Gérôme accepted, as well, Eakins. A few months later Gérôme accepted Eakins as well. Cassatt supplemented her artistic training with daily copies at the Louvre (she obtained the required permission, as it was necessary to control the “copyists”, usually low-paid women, who filled the museum day after day to paint copies and sell them). The museum also served as a social gathering place for French and American students who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend the cafés where the avant-garde socialized. This is how her friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and married the famous academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Toward the end of 1866, he joined a painting class taught by Charles Joshua Chaplin, a genre artist. In 1868, Cassatt studied with the artist Thomas Couture, whose subjects were mostly romantic and urban.On trips to the countryside they used to draw everyday life in the open air, mostly peasants engaged in their daily activities. In 1868, for the first time, one of his paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted by the selection jury for the Paris Salon. Along with Elizabeth Jane Gardner, whose work was also accepted that year, Cassatt was one of the first two American women to exhibit at the Salon. A Mandoline Player is characteristic of the Romantic style of Corot and Couture, and one of only two paintings from the first decade of her work that can be documented today.
The French art scene was in a process of change. Radical artists such as Courbet and Manet were trying to break with the accepted academic tradition and the Impressionists were in their formative years. Eliza Haldeman wrote: “artists are abandoning the style of the Academy and everyone is looking for new ways, new options…consequently, all is chaos”.Cassatt, on the other hand, continued to work in the traditional manner, submitting works to the Salon for over ten years, but increasing his frustration.
Cassat returned to Altoona, U.S.A., in the late summer of 1870, as the Franco-Prussian War was beginning. Her father continued to resist her chosen vocation and paid for her basic needs, but not her art supplies. Mary managed to place two of her paintings in a gallery in New York, finding many admirers, but no buyers.During the summer a recurring conflict for Mary lay in the lack of studio paintings; during this time Cassatt considered abandoning art and seeking work that would allow her to live independently. In July 1871 she wrote: “I have given up my studio…I tear my father”s portrait, have not touched a brush for six weeks nor will I do so again until I see some chance of returning to Europe. I am anxious to go out west next fall and get some employment, I have not yet decided where.”
Cassatt traveled to Chicago to try her luck, however she lost some of her paintings in the great Chicago fire of 1871.Soon after, her work attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Pittsburgh, who asked her for two copies of Correggio in Parma, Italy, providing her with enough money to travel and cover her expenses. Excitedly she wrote: “how happy I am to be able to work, my fingers itch and my eyes water to see a good painting again. “With Emily Sartain, an artist from a good American family, Cassatt returned to Europe.
A few months after his return to Europe, in the fall of 1871, Cassatt”s situation changed. Her painting Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival was well received and bought at the 1872 Salon. In Parma she attracted public attention and was supported and encouraged by the artistic community: “All Parma is talking about Miss Cassatt and her pictures, everyone is anxious to meet her”.
After finishing his commission in Italy, Cassatt traveled to Madrid and Seville, where he painted some works based on different Spanish themes, among them Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American Art). In 1874, he decided to take up permanent residence in France. She settled with her sister Lydia, sharing an apartment with her, and opened a studio in Paris. Louisa May Alcott”s sister, Abigail May Alcott, was at that time an art student in Paris and constantly visited Cassatt. Around this time Mary again criticized the politics of the Salon and the traditional style that prevailed there. Cassatt was blunt in her comments, according to information provided by Sartain, who wrote: “she is totally mad, she snubs all modern art, she scorns the images of Cabanel, of all the names we have revered.”
Cassatt warned that works painted by women were often treated with contempt unless the artist had a friend or patron on the jury, and she refused to flirt with jurors to curry favor.Her cynicism grew when one of the two paintings she submitted in 1875 was rejected by the jury, which nevertheless accepted it the following year after simply darkening the background. Cassatt argued constantly with Sartain, who considered Cassatt too outspoken and self-centered, until they finally parted ways. At that time Cassatt decided to move away from genre painting and focus on more fashionable subjects in order to attract portrait commissions of American socialites abroad, but the attempt bore little fruit at first.
In 1877 the two paintings she submitted to the Salon were rejected and for the first time in seven years she had no works exhibited there.At this low point in her career, Edgar Degas invited her to show her works to the Impressionists, a group of artists who had begun exhibiting independently in 1874 with much notoriety. The Impressionists (also known at first as the “Independents” or “Intransigents”) did not propose a formal manifesto and varied considerably in subject matter and technique. They preferred plein air painting and the application of pure, unmixed colors on the palette in loose brushstrokes, which would allow the eye to combine the results in an “impressionistic” manner. The Impressionists had reaped the wrath of critics for several years. Henry Bacon, a friend of Cassatt”s, thought the Impressionists were so radical that they were “afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of the eye. At that time they already had a female member, the painter Berthe Morisot, who would become Cassatt”s friend and colleague.
Cassatt admired Degas, whose pastels had made a powerful impression on him when he saw them in an art gallery window in 1875. “I used to go and flatten my nose against the window and absorb all I could of his art” he later recalled. “It changed my life; I saw art as I wanted to see it. “He accepted Degas”s invitation with enthusiasm and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist exhibition, scheduled for 1878, which (after a postponement due to the World”s Fair) took place on April 10, 1879. He already felt part of the Impressionists” group and joined their cause with enthusiasm, declaring: “we are fighting a desperate struggle and we need all our strength”.Unable to attend meetings in cafés without attracting unfavorable attention, he met with them privately and at exhibitions. Now he hoped to gain commercial success and sell his paintings to sophisticated Parisians who preferred avant-garde works. Her style had gained a new spontaneity during those two years when she adopted the habit of always carrying with her a sketchbook in which she sketched the scenes she saw.
In 1877, Cassatt was reunited in Paris with her parents, who arrived in the French capital with her sister Lydia, with the idea of sharing a large apartment on the fifth floor of number 13 on Avenue Trudaine. Mary valued their company, as neither she nor Lydia had married. Cassatt had decided that marriage would be incompatible with her career. Lydia, who was often painted by her sister, suffered recurrent attacks of her illness, a severe kidney failure diagnosed in 1877, and her death in 1882 left Cassatt momentarily unable to work.
Mary Cassatt insisted, despite her father”s presence, on covering studio expenses with her sales, which remained meager. Fearful of having to end up painting mediocre but easily sold works to make ends meet, she applied herself to creating quality works for the next Impressionist exhibition. Three of his most important works in 1878 were Portrait of the Artist (self-portrait), Little Girl in a Blue Armchair and Reading Le Figaro (portrait of his mother).
Degas had a considerable influence on Cassatt. Mary became extremely proficient in the use of pastel colors, eventually producing many of her most important works in this medium. Degas also introduced her to etching, of which he was an acknowledged master. For a time they worked together and her line drawing gained strength under his tutelage. Degas showed her in a series of etchings on his visits to the Louvre. She treasured their friendship, but learned not to expect too much of his fickle and temperamental nature after a project they were collaborating on at the time was thwarted: a magazine devoted to etching, which was abruptly abandoned by Degas. The elegant and sophisticated Degas, at 45, was one of the guests at the Cassatt residence”s welcome dinner and was welcome at their soirées (soirees).
The 1879 Impressionist exhibition was the most successful to date, despite the absence of Renoir, Sisley, Manet and Cézanne, who were once again trying to gain recognition at the Salon. Through the efforts of Caillebotte, who organized and financed the event, the group made a profit and sold many works, although the critics remained as harsh as ever. La Revue des Deux Mondes wrote: “Monsieur Degas and Mademoiselle Cassatt are, however, the only artists who distinguish themselves…who offer a certain attraction, an excuse in a pretentious show of childish window dressing and mudslinging.”
Cassatt showed eleven works, including Lydia in a Loge, Wearing a Pearl Necklace, (Woman in a Loge). Although critics claimed that Cassatt”s colors were too bright and that his portraits were too accurate to be flattering, his work was not fiercely attacked like that of Monet, whose circumstances were the most desperate of all the Impressionists of the day. Cassatt used his winnings to purchase a work by Degas and another by Monet. He participated in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880 and 1881 and continued to be an active member of the Impressionist circle until 1886. In 1886, Cassatt submitted two paintings to the first Impressionist exhibition in the U.S., organized by Paul Durand-Ruel. Her friend Louisine Elder married Harry Havemeyer in 1883 and with Cassatt as advisor, the couple began collecting Impressionist paintings on a large scale. Much of their vast collection is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Cassatt also painted several family portraits during this period, including Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and his son Robert Kelso (1885), which is considered one of his finest works. Cassatt”s style evolved from there and he moved away from Impressionism in search of a simpler approach. He began to exhibit his works in New York galleries. After 1886, Cassatt ceased to identify with any one art movement and experimented with a variety of techniques.
In 1893 she painted the mural Modern Woman at one end of the Honor Gallery of the Woman”s Building at the World”s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The mural was lost with the demolition of the building.
Cassatt and Degas collaborated for a long time. Their studios were quite close, Cassatt at 19 Rue Laval and Degas at 4 Rue Frochot, less than a five-minute walk away. Degas made a habit of visiting Cassatt”s studio, offering his advice and helping him to obtain models.
They had much in common: similar tastes in art and literature, both came from wealthy families, had studied painting in Italy, and were independent and single. The degree of intimacy between them cannot be assessed, as there are no letters, but it is unlikely that they also maintained a romantic relationship given their conservative social backgrounds and strong moral principles. Some of Vincent van Gogh”s letters attest to Degas”s sexual continence. Degas taught Cassatt pastel painting and etching, techniques that Cassatt quickly mastered; for his part, Cassatt helped Degas sell his paintings and promote his figure in the United States.
Both considered themselves painters of the human figure; art historian George Shacklelford suggests that they were influenced by the call to revitalize painting launched by art critic Louis Edmond Duranty in his pamphlet The New Painting: “Let us bid farewell to the stylized human body, which is treated like a vase. What we need is the characteristic modern person in his clothes, in the midst of his social environment, at home or in the street”.
After Cassatt”s parents and sister joined her in Paris in 1877, Degas, Cassatt and Lydia were often seen at the Louvre studying art. Degas produced two prints, notable for their technical innovation, in which he depicted Cassatt in the Louvre looking at works of art, while Lydia read a guidebook. The prints were intended for a periodical devoted to printmaking planned by Degas (along with Camille Pissarro and others), a project that would not come to fruition. Cassatt often posed for Degas, especially for his series trying on hats.
Around 1884 Degas made an oil portrait of Cassatt, Mary Cassatt Seated, Letters in Hand, in which the painter appears wearing a hat and dress identical to those she wore in her Self-Portrait of circa 1880, leading Griselda Pollock to speculate that they were executed in a joint painting session in the early years of their friendship.
Cassatt and Degas worked more closely during the fall and winter of 1879 to 1880, as Cassatt learned the technique of engraving. Degas owned a small print shop. Mary, by day, worked in his studio using his tools and press and at night did studies for the next day”s plate. In April 1880, Degas abruptly withdrew from the magazine on which they had been collaborating. Degas”s withdrawal upset Cassatt, who had been hard at work preparing some etchings, the Opera painting, and a large edition of fifty prints, no doubt intended for the magazine. Although Cassatt”s affection for Degas lasted a lifetime, he never worked closely with him again. Mathews notes that he stopped executing his theatrical scenes at this time.
Degas was outspoken in his views, as was Cassatt. They clashed over the Dreyfus affair (at an early point in her career, Mary had executed a portrait of the art collector Moyse Dreyfus, a relative of the captain). Cassatt later expressed her satisfaction with the irony of 1915, where at an art exhibition organized by Lousine Havermeyer she paired her work, based on women”s suffrage, with that of Degas, full of anti-feminist commentary (on seeing Two Women Picking Fruit, she remarked, “No woman has the right to draw like that”). From the 1890s onward their relationship took on a purely commercial aspect, due to Cassatt”s relations with the Impressionist circle; however, they continued to visit each other until Degas”s death in 1917.
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