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American Impressionist in Paris

© Tricia Dake

The art of Mary Cassatt escaped my notice for many years. Certainly her art hung on museum walls next to other great Impressionists – Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, and Edgar Degas. But it wasn’t discussed in any of my art classes. It was simply omitted. I personally don’t think this was because her art wasn’t good enough or insignificant. The question is: Was her Impressionist art relegated as unimportant because she was a woman or because she was an American? Since the art of French born Camille Pissarro suffered similar treatment – I believe the slight was gender-based.

Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania – today, we would simply say Pittsburgh – in 1844. In a day when daughters having careers was unheard of, the concept of a female artist was utterly scandalous. Male artists were often considered on the edge of respectability, as it was, let alone a female artist! But none of this prevented Mary from pursuing her dream. From the age of sixteen, she knew what she wanted. In 1861, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In fact, it can be surmised that Mary wasn’t going to waste any time in achieving her goal, as she was the first enrollee for that semester. At the Academy she learned by copying the art of classical artists and masters of the Renaissance. She practiced drawing from live models, but was prohibited from classes that used nude models. When she felt she had learned as much as she could in Philadelphia, she insisted on going to Europe to immerse herself in the art world there. Though her parents protested mightily, she eventually won them to her cause and went to Paris in 1866. Through studying art in the museums of Europe, particularly at the Louvre and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, her style began to mature and eventually attracted the notice of French Impressionist Edgar Degas. It was Degas who invited Mary Cassatt to exhibit her work along with himself and the other Impressionists, then known as Independents. Mary was one of only two women invited to exhibit and she was the only American in the group.

Mary Cassatt’s art consisted primarily of domestic scenes. She painted portraits of her family when they came to visit. There are scenes of her mother reading the paper and of her sister Lydia dressed in pink and drinking a cup of tea. Like Edgar Degas, Mary was influenced by Japanese woodcut art and began making her compositions less dependent on mass and more focused on line. Her asymmetrical compositions give her paintings an informality, making them appear natural and unposed. She was forty-six years of age before she had a solo exhibition.

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