The Feminine Perspective: Timeless Impressionism of Mary Cassatt

The text below is the excerpt of the book Cassatt and artworks (ISBN: 9781781608449), written by Nathalia Brodskaïa, published by Parkstone International.

“I have touched with a sense of art some people – they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?”

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker known for her Impressionist artworks, particularly her intimate portrayals of mothers and children. Born in 1844, she spent much of her life in France, where she became associated with the Impressionist movement and exhibited alongside prominent artists such as Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. Cassatt’s work often focused on domestic scenes and the bond between mothers and children, reflecting her interest in the social and familial aspects of life. She played a significant role in introducing Impressionism to American audiences and remains celebrated for her contributions to art history.

When she arrived in Paris in 1866, Mary Cassatt was twenty-two years old and she was one of many young Americans who had chosen to study in Paris. They arrived, painted in numerous Parisian academies and free studios, and met one another in the same “American” cafes, those little islands of homeland in foreign France where one spoke either English or terribly-accented French. After a while, they all returned home to become famous in their hometowns, or, at most, in their states. Mary, however, was the exception; she did not go back to America.

Not only did she stay in France until the end of her life, but she also devoted herself to Impressionism in defiance of the contemporary artistic conventions. Even among Impressionists, however, she was considered “strange,” and she remained for them “a foreign impressionist”. Mary never painted a single landscape, although it was precisely in landscape that the genre had originated, matured, and was expressed most vividly. Cassatt limited her work to only one intimate genre – depictions of women and children. Nevertheless, she was devoted to Impressionism such as she saw it in the work of Degas, her friend and mentor. She considered it an honour to exhibit her work together with that of Monet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot.

Mary fitted into this group quite naturally. She was not afraid of Paris’s merciless, poisonous criticism, or the questionable privilege of being one of the rejects, even though before she joined the Impressionists her work had already been accepted by the Salon. She was incredibly gifted and unbelievably hardworking, and her French colleagues acknowledged this without fail. Mary Cassatt found her place among the best artists of her generation. She worked masterfully in oil and pastel, as well as the difficult and laborious graphic techniques. Her independence inspired respect.

Only much later, however, at the end of the twentieth century, was it recognised that Cassatt had accomplished the goal of future generations of artists. In fact, she had become the first artist of the School of Paris, which was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. When young artists from Russia, Italy, Poland, Spain and Mexico began flocking to Paris, when Russian and American collectors became the first to purchase the new, shocking works of art, and when the literature of future American writers of renown was being born in the cafés of Montmartre and Montparnasse, the life of the blind artist Mary Cassatt was coming to an end at Château de Beaufresne in Mesnil-Théribus (Oise).

The enigma of Mary Cassatt began at her very birth. Some biographers regard 1845 as the year of her birth, and her tombstone in Le Mesnil-Théribus indicates May 24th 1845. However, it is probably best to trust family archives and parish records, which record her birthday as May 22nd 1844. She was born in the United States, in Allegheny, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As she proudly told her biographer at the end of her life: “I am an American,” she said, “downright American… My mother is also an American, a daughter of Americans. Her family was of Scottish origin, who emigrated to America around 1700.

Therefore our family has been established in Pennsylvania for a long time and particularly in Pittsburgh where I was born.” There was pride in the artist’s words. She was always proud of her native Pittsburgh, a steel town destined to become one of the most prosperous cities in the United States. Her ancestors were among those who settled this land beginning in the 1700’s, and they had many great achievements. Mary’s father, Robert Simpson Cassatt (1806-1891) was a banker, although, according to her own words, he “did not have the heart of a businessman at all.”

He devoted much energy to the upbringing of his children, and was successful in this as well, judging by their outstanding achievements. Mary was the fourth of his five children. Her older brother, Alexander Johnston Cassatt (1839-1906), carried on the family trade, and became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was at the same time one of the main constructors of the New York Railroad and it was he who chose and implemented the plan for Central Station, which is considered to be an architectural masterpiece. As a businessman, he possessed the taste and the sophistication of a true artist. For many years, his reputation in America eclipsed the fame his sister had gained in art.

Perhaps the fact that her father “was full of French ideas”, according to Mary, played a special role in his children’s upbringing. That is where one more secret of the Cassatt family is revealed. It so happens that Mary’s father’s ancestors brought French blood into the family. “‘My family is of French origin, Mary related, ‘’Well before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – exactly in 1662 – a Frenchman named Cossart emigrated from France to Holland.” This Cossart settled in Leyde, where many documents regarding his family are found among the records of the Walloon Church. He later moved to Amsterdam before going to settle in the United States.

And, naturally, it was not by accident that Cossart chose New Amsterdam as his new home in that distant land. The name of this city was the thread connecting him with Europe. His grandson settled in Pennsylvania, where the family, now known as Cassatt, remained for good. Mary’s father was the great-grandson of this first Pennsylvanian. However, it was not the father but the mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston (1816-1895), who nourished the yearning for the faraway, still unknown, but thrilling France in the family. The children once found in their home a letter written in flawless French by their mother at the age of twelve.

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