Essay on Mary Cassatt: From Wealthy Pennsylvanian to Celebrated Painter

Mary Cassatt Stevenson was born in 1844, may 2nd, in Pennsylvania, and died in France on 14th June 1926 (Shields, 2016). Robert Simpson, Her father, posed as a wealthy investment broker and a mogul in real estate. She was raised in a background that looks at travel equally fundamental to education. In 1961 she joined the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and graduated the year 1865. Her training equipped her with adequate skills for a proper mother and wife. In 1866, Cassatt left Pennsylvania for Paris, where she enrolled for private art lessons studying and perfecting on masterpieces in Louvre (Gandhi, 2019). Despite women being disheartened from pursuing a career, Mary did not give up on her dreams. At school, she encountered rough moments from fellow students and the male colleagues at Louvre, who were bitter and demeaning of her presence.

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She delightfully joined the impressionists in 1877 through an invitation from Edgar Degas, an artist. Whereas most of her impressionists concentrated on street scenes and backgrounds, Cassatt became well-known for her sketches. Beneath Edgar Degas and other impressionists' inspiration Cassatt improved her painting styles from light colors to painting people. Mary Cassatt was a prominent artist in the impressionist movement since she was involved in various exhibitions from 1879 onwards in Paris. Later in 1886, she was included in the first impressionist art exhibition held in Durand-Ruel New York galleries, United States (Gandhi, 2019). After the demonstration, Cassatt developed an interest in young artists in America and encouraged the wealthy class to fund and endorse the industry by buying the products and sponsoring various impressionists. She alleged that it was prominence that Americans be in a position of learning art while at home. Again, she offered advice to collectors developing a culture and stipulations that the purchased materials would later end up in American museums of arts.

Cassatt was persistent in specializing in domestic interior scenes of women, motivated by impressionist emphasizing on contemporary life moments' quick capture and maximized her skills in drawing, Oil painting advancing to pastel and printmaking. She incorporated various Japanese arts that had become popular in Paris and applied their visual devices in her masterpieces (Shields, 2016). She was determined, believed in herself, and worked hard to achieve what she set. Cassatt managed to excel in her career despite the societal restrictions pinned on the woman with her art, though she did not enjoy as much freedom as her male counterparts in artistic fields. Still, desire and commitment to fulfilling her desires empowered her to be one of the best. She instilled the general impression on the outdated academic arts to her fellow impressionists and ventured in new models of representing modern everyday life.

References

Gandhi, J. S. (2019). Cataracts in the Eyesight of Cassatt. The American Journal of Medicine, 132(8), 1001-1002.

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(19)30251-7/abstract

Shields, C. N. (2016). Refracting the Male Gaze: Mary Cassatt’s Ocularcentric Message of Female Agency. Quercus: Linfield Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2(1), 4. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=quercus