"Mary Stevenson Cassatt"

By Maryem Sohail 
 

Mary Cassatt:

Introduction:

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born on May 12, 1844 in Allegheny city which is now part of Pittsburgh. She as a famous American painter and printmaker. She lived most of her life in France where she befriended with Edgar Degas. She created paintings of the private and social lives of women with emphasis on the bonds between mothers and their children. Gustave Geffroy describe Mary Cassatt as one of the great ladies of Impressionism. And then Diego Martelli compared Mary Cassatt with Degas as they both seek to represent movement, design in the modern sense.

Early life:

Mary Cassatt was born in the city of Allegheny which is part of Pittsburgh she grew up in an upper middle-class family. Her father was Robert Simpson cassatt and he was a famous stockbroker and also a land speculator. Cassatt was the family's surname, and they were descended from French Huguenot Jacques Cassatt, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1662. Mary Cassatt’s mother Katherine Kelso Johnston was from a banking family. She was well educated and Well-read ad has a deep influence on her daughter. For this Reason, a famous author and also a friend of Mary Cassatt wrote in her memors that “Anyone who had the pleasure of meeting Mary Cassatt's mother would immediately recognize that [Mary] received her talent from her and only her”.

She was a distant cousin of Robert Henri and she was one of seven children and two of whom died in the early childhood. Her one brother alexander Johnston Cassatt become the president of the railroad of Pennsylvania then of the Philadelphia area and in the area of Pennsylvania she started her schooling when she was six years old. Mary Cassatt grew up in a family that believed travelling is an essential for education. She spent five years of her life in Europe and explore many of the capitals that include London, Paris and berlin. When she was in Europe, she also learned many other languages such as German and French and she took her first lessons of drawing and music also. Her first exposure to French artists that include some of the talented artists such as Jean Auguste Dominique ingres, Eugene Delacroix, Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet was at the world’s fair that took place in 1855. Edgar degas and Camille Pissarro were also there in the exhibition and they become her colleagues and mentors later.

Her family were not with her to becoming a professional artist, she starts studying painting at the academy of fine arts in Pennsylvania when she was 15 years old. In the end of the year 1866, she joined a class which was taught by a genre artist Charles Joshua Chaplin. She also studied with Thomas couture who was studying Romantic and Urban.

Later in her life she got a chance to travel to Chicago and there she lost her some of the paintings in the great fire of Chicago that happened in 1871. After this incident. her work was so good that her work attracted the attention of roman Catholic Bishop who wanted her to paint two copies of paintings.