text_chunks:
<mask> (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. <mask> often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of "les trois grandes dames" (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879,  Diego Martelli compared her to Degas, as they both sought to depict movement, light, and design in the most modern sense. Early life

<mask> was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into an upper-middle-class family: Her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later <mask>), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator.The ancestral name had been Cossart, with the family descended from French Huguenot Jacques Cossart, who came to New Amsterdam in 1662. Her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family. <mask>, educated and well-read, had a profound influence on her daughter. To that effect, <mask>'s lifelong friend Louisine Havemeyer wrote in her memoirs: "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing <mask>'s mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that [<mask>] inherited her ability." A distant cousin of artist Robert Henri, <mask> was one of seven children, of whom two died in infancy. One brother, Alexander Johnston <mask>, later became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she started her schooling at the age of six.<mask> grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music. It is likely that her first exposure to French artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, and Gustave Courbet was at the Paris World's Fair of 1855. Also in the exhibition were Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, both of whom were later her colleagues and mentors. Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, <mask> began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15. Part of her parents' concern may have been <mask>'s exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students. As such, <mask> and her network of friends were lifelong advocates of equal rights for the sexes.Although about 20% of the students were female, most viewed art as a socially valuable skill; few of them were determined, as <mask> was, to make art their career. She continued her studies from 1861 through 1865, the duration of the American Civil War. Thomas Eakins was among her fellow students; later Eakins was forced to resign as director of the Academy. Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said: "There was no teaching" at the Academy. Female students could not use live models, until somewhat later, and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts. <mask> decided to end her studies: At that time, no degree was granted.After overcoming her father's objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones. Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, <mask> applied to study privately with masters from the school and was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and his depiction of exotic subjects. (A few months later Gérôme also accepted Eakins as a student.) <mask> augmented her artistic training with daily copying in the Louvre, obtaining the required permit, which was necessary to control the "copyists", usually low-paid women, who daily filled the museum to paint copies for sale. The museum also served as a social place for Frenchmen and American female students, who, like <mask>, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized. In this manner, fellow artist and friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and married famed academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Toward the end of 1866, she joined a painting class taught by Charles Joshua Chaplin, a genre artist.In 1868, <mask> also studied with artist Thomas Couture, whose subjects were mostly romantic and urban. On trips to the countryside, the students drew from life, particularly the peasants going about their daily activities. In 1868, one of her paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted for the first time by the selection jury for the Paris Salon. With Elizabeth Jane Gardner, whose work was also accepted by the jury that year, <mask> was one of two American women to first exhibit in the Salon. A Mandoline Player is in the Romantic style of Corot and Couture, and is one of only two paintings from the first decade of her career that is documented today. The French art scene was in a process of change, as radical artists such as Courbet and Édouard Manet tried to break away from accepted Academic tradition and the Impressionists were in their formative years. <mask>'s friend Eliza Haldeman wrote home that artists "are leaving the Academy style and each seeking a new way, consequently just now everything is Chaos."<mask>, on the other hand, continued to work in the traditional manner, submitting works to the Salon for over ten years, with increasing frustration. Returning to the United States in the late summer of 1870—as the Franco-Prussian War was starting—<mask> lived with her family in Altoona. Her father continued to resist her chosen vocation, and paid for her basic needs, but not her art supplies. <mask> placed two of her paintings in a New York gallery and found many admirers but no purchasers. She was also dismayed at the lack of paintings to study while staying at her summer residence. <mask> even considered giving up art, as she was determined to make an independent living. She wrote in a letter of July 1871, "I have given up my studio & torn up my father's portrait, & have not touched a brush for six weeks nor ever will again until I see some prospect of getting back to Europe.I am very anxious to go out west next fall & get some employment, but I have not yet decided where." <mask> traveled to Chicago to try her luck, but lost some of her early paintings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Shortly afterward, her work attracted the attention of Roman Catholic Bishop Michael Domenec of Pittsburgh, who commissioned her to paint two copies of paintings by Correggio in Parma, Italy, advancing her enough money to cover her travel expenses and part of her stay. In her excitement she wrote, "O how wild I am to get to work, my fingers farely itch & my eyes water to see a fine picture again". With Emily Sartain, a fellow artist from a well-regarded artistic family from Philadelphia, <mask> set out for Europe again. Impressionism

Within months of her return to Europe in the autumn of 1871, <mask>'s prospects had brightened. Her painting Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival was well received in the Salon of 1872, and was purchased.She attracted much favorable notice in Parma and was supported and encouraged by the art community there: "All Parma is talking of Miss <mask> and her picture, and everyone is anxious to know her". After completing her commission for the bishop, <mask> traveled to Madrid and Seville, where she painted a group of paintings of Spanish subjects, including Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla (1873, in the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution). In 1874, she made the decision to take up residence in France. She was joined by her sister Lydia who shared an apartment with her. <mask> opened a studio in Paris. Louisa May Alcott's sister, Abigail May Alcott, was then an art student in Paris and visited Cassatt. <mask> continued to express criticism of the politics of the Salon and the conventional taste that prevailed there.She was blunt in her comments, as reported by Sartain, who wrote: "she is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern art, disdains the Salon pictures of Cabanel, Bonnat, all the names we are used to revere". <mask> saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor. Her cynicism grew when one of the two pictures she submitted in 1875 was refused by the jury, only to be accepted the following year after she darkened the background. She had quarrels with Sartain, who thought <mask> too outspoken and self-centered, and eventually they parted. Out of her distress and self-criticism, <mask> decided that she needed to move away from genre paintings and onto more fashionable subjects, in order to attract portrait commissions from American socialites abroad, but that attempt bore little fruit at first. In 1877, both 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 that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety.The Impressionists (also known as the "Independents" or "Intransigents") had no formal manifesto and varied considerably in subject matter and technique. They tended to prefer plein air painting and the application of vibrant color in separate strokes with little pre-mixing, which allows the eye to merge the results in an "impressionistic" manner. The Impressionists had been receiving the wrath of the critics for several years. Henry Bacon, a friend of the <mask>s, thought that the Impressionists were so radical that they were "afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of the eye". They already had one female member, artist Berthe Morisot, who became <mask>'s friend and colleague. <mask> admired Degas, whose pastels had made a powerful impression on her when she encountered them in an art dealer's window in 1875. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she later recalled."It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it." She accepted Degas' invitation with enthusiasm and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist show, planned for 1878, which (after a postponement because of the World's Fair) took place on April 10, 1879. She felt comfortable with the Impressionists and joined their cause enthusiastically, declaring: "we are carrying on a despairing fight & need all our forces". Unable to attend cafes with them without attracting unfavorable attention, she met with them privately and at exhibitions. She now hoped for commercial success selling paintings to the sophisticated Parisians who preferred the avant-garde. Her style had gained a new spontaneity during the intervening two years.Previously a studio-bound artist, she had adopted the practice of carrying a sketchbook with her while out-of-doors or at the theater, and recording the scenes she saw. In 1877, <mask> was joined in Paris by her father and mother, who returned with her sister Lydia, all eventually to share a large apartment on the fifth floor of 13, Avenue Trudaine, (). <mask> valued their companionship, as neither she nor Lydia had married. A case was made that <mask> suffered from narcissistic disturbance, never completing the recognition of herself as a person outside of the orbit of her mother. <mask> had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career. Lydia, who was frequently painted by her sister, suffered from recurrent bouts of illness, and her death in 1882 left <mask> temporarily unable to work. <mask>'s father insisted that her studio and supplies be covered by her sales, which were still meager.Afraid of having to paint "potboilers" to make ends meet, <mask> applied herself to produce some quality paintings for the next Impressionist exhibition. Three of her most accomplished works from 1878 were Portrait of the Artist (self-portrait), Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, and Reading Le Figaro (portrait of her mother). Degas had considerable influence on <mask>. Both were highly experimental in their use of materials, trying distemper and metallic paints in many works, such as Woman Standing Holding a Fan, 1878–79 (Amon Carter Museum of American Art). She became extremely proficient in the use of pastels, eventually creating many of her most important works in this medium. Degas also introduced her to etching, of which he was a recognized master. The two worked side by side for a while, and her draftsmanship gained considerable strength under his tutelage.One example of her thoughtful approach to the medium of drypoint as a mode for reflecting on her status as an artist is 'Reflection' of 1889–90, which has recently been interpreted as a self-portrait. Degas in turn depicted <mask> in a series of etchings recording their trips to the Louvre. She treasured his friendship but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature after a project they were collaborating on at the time, a proposed journal devoted to prints, was abruptly dropped by him. The sophisticated and well-dressed Degas, then forty-five, was a welcome dinner guest at the Cassatt residence, and likewise they at his soirées. The Impressionist exhibit of 1879 was the most successful to date, despite the absence of Renoir, Sisley, Manet and Cézanne, who were attempting once again to gain recognition at the Salon. Through the efforts of Gustave Caillebotte, who organized and underwrote the show, the group made a profit and sold many works, although the criticism continued as harsh as ever. The Revue des Deux Mondes wrote, "M. Degas and Mlle.<mask> are, nevertheless, the only artists who distinguish themselves... and who offer some attraction and some excuse in the pretentious show of window dressing and infantile daubing". <mask> displayed eleven works, including Lydia in a Loge, Wearing a Pearl Necklace, (Woman in a Loge). Although critics claimed that <mask>'s colors were too bright and that her portraits were too accurate to be flattering to the subjects, her work was not savaged as was Monet's, whose circumstances were the most desperate of all the Impressionists at that time. She used her share of the profits to purchase a work by Degas and one by Monet. She participated in the Impressionist Exhibitions that followed in 1880 and 1881, and she remained an active member of the Impressionist circle until 1886. In 1886, <mask> provided two paintings for the first Impressionist exhibition in the US, organized by art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Her friend Louisine Elder married Harry Havemeyer in 1883, and with <mask> as advisor, the couple began collecting the Impressionists on a grand scale.Much of their vast collection is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. <mask> also made several portraits of family members during that period, of

masks:
Mary Stevenson Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Katherine Cassatt
Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Mary
Mary
Mary
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt
Cassatt