hey guys, welcome back to another famous artist video.
today i'll be drawing Mary Cassatt in a cute cartoon/anime style while teaching you some
fun facts you may or may not know.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker born on May 22, 1844 in Allegheny
City, Pennsylvania.
Though she was a leading artist among the Impressionists, she stood out from her colleagues
who did landscapes and street scenes with her portraits.
She was especially drawn to women in everyday domestic settings, specifically mothers with
their children.
Cassatt had her first drawing and music lessons at seven when she was living abroad in Europe.
She was first exposed to French artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix,
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Gustave Courbet at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855, as well
as Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, both of which would be future colleagues and mentors.
At fifteen, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
in Philadelphia, despite her family’s objections to her becoming a professional artist.
But she was impatient with the slow pace and the patronizing attitude of the male students
and teachers, so she decided to study the old masters herself.
Additionally, during this time period, female students could not use live models like their
male counterparts and had to draw from inanimate objects.
In 1866, Cassatt moved to Paris and applied to study privately with masters from the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, which did not y et allow women to attend.
She was accepted to study with Jean-Leon Gerome, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyperrealism.
In 1868, one of her paintings, A Mandolin Player, was accepted by the selection jury
for the Paris Salon.
However, the French art scene was changing and artists such as Gustave Courbet and Édouard
Manet were making a radical shift from academic tradition to impressionism.
Cassatt continued to work and submit traditional-looking works to the Salon for over a decade but grew
frustrated and finally decided to work within the Impressionist style.
She returned to the United States in the summer of 1870 as the Franco-Prussian war began and
could not afford art supplies.
She tried to sell some of her existing paintings but had no luck, and considered giving up
art to make an independent living.
Soon afterward, her work caught the eye of the Archbishop of Pittsburgh and he commissioned
her to paint two copies of paintings by Antonio da Correggio in Parma, Italy.
She then travelled to Madrid and Seville and completed a group of paintings of Spanish
subjects, including Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873).
In 1874, she moved to France with her sister and criticized the politics of the Salon and
their conventional tastes.
Her criticisms led to quarrels with fellow artist John Sartain, who thought she was too
outspoken and self-absorbed, stating, “She is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern
art, disdains the Salon pictures of [Alexandre] Cabanel, [Léon] Bonnat, all the names we
used to revere."
After parting ways with Sartain, Cassatt observed that female artists were usually dismissed
with contempt unless they had a friend or protector on the jury, and she refused to
flirt with jurors to gain favour.
This led to distress and self-criticism on her part, and she decided to move away from
genre paintings onto subjects that would attract portrait commissions from American socialites.
However, in 1877, both of her entries were rejected and for the first time in seven years,
she had no works in the Salon.
At this low point in her career, she was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the
Impressionists, a group who began their own series of independent exhibitions a few years
earlier.
The works of the Impressionists varied in subject matter and technique, but they favoured
open air painting and vibrant, distinct paint strokes with little pre-mixing.
Cassatt, having had admired Degas, accepted his invitation and joined the Impressionists.
In 1878, she produced some of her most accomplished works: Portrait of the Artist (self-portrait),
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, and Reading Le Figaro (portrait of her mother).
Degas influenced Cassatt greatly, introducing her to copper engraving, becoming the subject
of his etchings, and working beside her.
She learned a considerable amount of artistic skills from his technique and knowledge.
Cassatt successfully displayed her works and profited off of them at Impressionist exhibits
until 1886, where she stopped being an active member of the Impressionists.
After 1886, she moved away from Impressionism and freely experimented with a variety of
techniques.
Cassatt gained popularity for using the theme of mother and child in her work, which she
almost exclusively concentrated on after 1900.
In 1891, she displayed a series of coloured drypoint and aquatint prints (i.e.
Woman Bathing and The Coiffure), which were inspired by printmaking techniques from Japanese
artists.
Cassat admired the simplicity and clarity of Japanese design and colours, and tended
to avoid black.
Though her work was popular with the public and the critics, she was no longer breaking
new ground and her Impressionist colleagues were dying off.
In 1911, she was diagnosed with several conditions including diabetes and cataracts, and had
to stop painting after 1914 as she became almost blind.
In 1915, Cassatt took up the cause of women’s suffrage and showed eighteen works supporting
the movement in an exhibition.
She died on June 14, 1926 near Paris.
Today, Cassatt is commemorated for her unconventional and distinct portraits - particularly of mothers
and children - making a notable mark on Impressionism and print-making, and boldly rebelling against
societal norms and expectations set for her as a woman artist in the 19th century.
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