Interesting Facts About Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt was an American painter, the only American invited to show with the French Impressionists, who never married, had no children, and still became famous for her tender scenes of mothers and children.
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She was an outsider twice over, an American in Paris and a woman in a men's circle, and she turned both into an advantage.
She was the only American with the Impressionists
Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with the group in 1877. No other American was asked. She showed her work in their independent shows while the official Salon still looked down on them.
She and Degas had a complicated bond
Degas was her mentor and her sparring partner. They were close for decades, then fell out. She burned their letters near the end of her life, so the full shape of the friendship is gone for good.
She helped build America's great collections
She advised the collector Louisine Havemeyer on what to buy in Europe. A large share of the French great works that later reached the Metropolitan Museum came through Cassatt's eye.
She was a suffragist who lost her sight
She painted a mural called Modern Woman for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, now lost. Cataracts and diabetes slowly ended her ability to paint. She died in 1926, nearly blind.
A force beyond her own canvas
Cassatt did more than paint. She advised wealthy American friends, above all Louisine and Henry Havemeyer, on what to buy, steering great Impressionist works across the Atlantic.
Many of those pictures now hang in the Metropolitan Museum in New York thanks to her eye.
For the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago she painted a large mural called Modern Woman, showing women reaching for knowledge and fame. The building was temporary and the mural was lost, one of the great vanished works of American art.
More secrets to unlock
Things readers ask about Cassatt
Where was she born? Near Pittsburgh, in 1844.
When did she die? In 1926, in France.
What is she known for? Mothers and children, in oil and in pastel.
Did she have children? No, though she became the great painter of motherhood.
In 1904 France made her a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, an award her own country never matched: the Pennsylvania Academy offered her its Gold Medal of Honor only in 1914, when she was seventy and nearly blind. The full life is in the complete Mary Cassatt story.