Mary Cassatt ( * 1845 † 1926 )

Biography of Mary Stevenson Cassatt

Master of Impressionism.

The painter and graphic artist Mary Cassatt came from an American banking family in Pennsylvania. Against her father's wishes, she decided to become a painter and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Since 1874, she lived in France and studied intensively the paintings of great masters such as Correggio, Velázquez, Titian, and Rubens.

Her own paintings gained recognition and were exhibited several times at the Paris Salon. The painter Edgar Degas prompted her to join the new movement of the Indépendants (later Impressionists). From 1879 to 1886, she exhibited regularly with the Impressionists and also played a significant role in making Impressionism popular in America early on.

Her artistic main theme was women, particularly the theme "Mother and Child." In her paintings, they appear in all conceivable situations within the bourgeois lifestyle at the end of the 19th century. In the 1880s, Cassatt also turned to graphic art

All images by Mary Cassatt

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