A mother tenderly bathing her child. A mother holding her baby in her arms. A mother hugging her child. Although Mary Cassatt declared herself unsuited to marriage, her paintings of women and their domestic life are among her most enduring. As a leading figure in the Impressionist movement these works made her one of the few successful female artists of her time.
Mary was born in 1844 to an affluent Pennsylvania family. As befitting her social status, she was well-traveled, well-educated and encouraged to take classes in music, embroidery, sketching and painting. These artistic endeavors were considered important steps in becoming a proper wife, not a path to a career. But she was determined to become a painter.
Over her parents’ objections, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at 15. As the Civil War tore apart the country, Mary remained at the school honing her skills. There, prohibited from using live models, women were confined to painting inanimate objects. Increasingly frustrated with those restrictions, she quit the school and moved to Paris in 1866.
Under the watchful eyes of chaperones, Mary took private classes with masters from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Women were not allowed to officially enroll in the school. She also spent her days at the Louvre studying and reproducing their vast collection of European art. It was here she met and socialized with fellow artists as women weren’t allowed at the cafes where the male artists congregated.
Despite these barriers to her gender, in 1868 Mary and her friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner became the first American women to exhibit at the famous Paris Salon. The Mandoline Player was painted in the traditional style favored by the Salon jurists. She would paint in this style for the next decade before joining the avant-garde Impressionist movement.
The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 saw Mary returning to Pennsylvania where her father welcomed her by discouraging her from becoming an artist. Refusing to fund her art supplies, Mary became determined to make an independent living. When two paintings she placed in a New York gallery went unsold, she headed to Chicago. The work she created there was lost in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Her luck turned when the Archbishop of Pittsburgh commissioned her to reproduce two paintings by Corregio in Italy. The advance allowed her to permanently relocate to Paris in 1874. Tiring of the traditional Salon style and their dismissive attitude towards female artists, she began experimenting with Impressionism. Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with them and profits from her sold paintings afforded her financial freedom. It also allowed her to purchase a Degas and a Monet.
The show also led to a working relationship with Degas. With studios near each other, she often posed for him and he taught her new skills like engraving and pastels. Both unmarried, there is speculation that their relationship went beyond a friendship, but no documentation remains to support this notion and their social mores would have prohibited such a relationship.
Her own work continued to garner attention. Chicagoan Berthe Palmer commissioned her to create a mural depicting the modern woman for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. And while participating in the first Impressionist show in America, she became a salesman for the movement by encouraging friends and family to purchase works from the soon-to-be-famous artists. She would go on to become an art advisor to many wealthy patrons and through her efforts these paintings are now star attractions in museums throughout the country.
Her career was cut short when diabetes and cataracts saw her losing her eyesight and by 1914 she was almost completely blind. Having spent much of her life fighting barriers to her gender, she spent her remaining years enthusiastically supporting the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Her donation of 18 paintings to the cause provided financial support, infuriating relatives opposed to the movement. She saw the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote in 1920, before dying in 1926 in France, where she is buried.