Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt ( May 22nd, 1844, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, † June 14, 1926 in Château de Beaufresne, Le Mesnil- Théribus, Oise, France) was a significant American graphic designer and painter of Impressionism.
Life and work
The painter Mary Cassatt was a daughter coming out of the money aristocracy Pennsylvania banking family. From a very young age, during a four -year stay of the family in Europe, she learned the art treasures of European galleries know. Against the wishes of her father, she decided to become a painter. 1861 she began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Since 1874 she lived in France, placed first in Paris to continue her studies, but ended soon after their academic training ( " The lessons of the museums is enough" ). With great intensity, she studied in France, Italy and Spain, paintings by the great masters such as Correggio, Velázquez, Titian and Rubens. Your own images found recognition and have been exhibited in the Paris Salon.
The painter Edgar Degas motivated them to join the new movement of Independents (later Impressionists). " I accepted with pleasure. I ... rejected the conventional art. With Degas on it was for many years a close friend I began to live. ". She exhibited with the Impressionists and also contributed significantly to that of Impressionism in America became popular early on. Already in 1877 she advised her friend, the wealthy New Yorker Louisine W. Havemeyer to acquire images of Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. It was probably the first Impressionist pictures that reached the USA. Later, she also advised Bertha Honoré Palmer from Chicago to build their art collection.
My main artistic theme were women, in particular the issue of " Mother and Child". In her paintings appear in all kinds of situations within the framework of the bourgeois way of life towards the end of the 19th century - together with their children or reading, at tea, at the opera. - After they had seen in Paris in 1890 Japanese Woodblock Prints, she tried with success in this area.
Since 1877, lived her parents and her sister in Paris. Mary had now for 18 years to provide in addition to their artistic work even for a larger budget. Still, they found time to inspire young art students, to encourage and support generously. The loss of vision ended in 1914 her time as a painter.
In 1904 she was admitted as a Knight in the French Legion of Honour.
Some pictures
Mother and Child, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
On a balcony during Carnival, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Two women sitting at the current
Louisine W. Havemeyer, Shelburne Museum
The boat ride, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Moise Dreyfus
The Loge