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Banjo Lesson
Mary Cassatt
Etching and Color Aquatint
11.5x9.5 inches
Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt is best known for her mother and child compositions and also for her color prints,based on Japanese woodblock techniques and that combined drypoint, etching, and aquatint. From 1890, she had herown printing press at her home. Born in 1844 in Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, she wasrecognized by the turn of the century as one of the preeminent painters both of her native country and of France, whichshe made her permanent home in 1875. She spent her childhood in Pennsylvania, and then lived with her mother inEurope from 1851 until 1858, studying in a number of cities including Paris, Parma, and Seville. She returned to study atthe Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865 and in 1866 went back to France, which she decided was bestsuited for her professional goals. There she spent much time studying works by artists living and deceased, and paintedwith Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas. Her first public success came at the Paris Salon of 1868 with apainting praised by a New York Times critic for its "vigor of treatment and fine qualities of color". Cassatt continued toexhibit at the Salon through the mid-1870s, and attracted the attention of Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the artistsdedicated to the "new painting", the Impressionists. At this time she abandoned the somber palette and traditional subjectmatter of the Academic style in favor of the light-filled modern life compositions favored by her colleagues, among themMonet, Renoir, and Morisot. She quickly adopted Impressionist techniques of applying paint rapidly from a brightpalette. Cassatt developed her own subject matter, using her family members as models because her lifestyle, withaging parents, was much more confined than that of the male Impressionists who were able to spend time in cafes andpaint subjects of society life. From 1879 to 1886 she was one of only three women to exhibit with the Impressionists, andthe only American woman. In 1878, at the request of Julian Weir, she sent two of her paintings to him in America forexhibition with the Society of American Artists. These paintings were among the first Impressionist works to be shown inAmerica. However, she received much more attention in France than she ever did in the United States. While somecritics were perplexed by the sketchy quality of her paint handling and the bold colors of the works, Cassatt showed atthe Impressionist exhibition of 1879, by 1881 she was almost uniformly praised, with two critics citing her work as thehighlight of that year's exhibition. It was in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition that Cassatt first displayed pictures of themother and child theme for which she is best known. Though a sensitive painter of women and even the occasionalmale subject, Cassatt achieved her greatest success in the depiction of maternity. She elevated the genre from the realmof the sentimental or anecdotal through a careful attention to naturalistic pose and gesture, to the exchange of gazesbetween mother and child, and with the use of animated brush strokes and bright tones. After the final Impressionistexhibition of 1886, Cassatt began to experiment more widely, transforming her imagery with references to Old MasterMadonna and Child paintings as well as Japanese prints. Her experiments with printmaking at this time resulted in oneof the great graphic monuments of the nineteenth century: the set of ten color prints first shown at Galeries Durand-Ruelin Paris in 1891. Gradually she abandoned Impressionist work for paintings that emphasized shapes and forms. As theyears progressed, Cassatt became increasingly involved with women's rights causes. She painted a mural for theWomen's Building in the 1893 Chicago World's Exposition on the theme of "Modern Woman", and also helped organizean exhibition of pictures by Old Masters and Degas, in addition to her own works, to benefit woman suffrage in 1915.Cassatt resided in Europe, mostly at her country chateau near Paris, the remainder of her life except during the Franco-Prussian War when her family insisted she return to Philadelphia. She brought much of her work back with her, andunfortunately it was destroyed in a fire, so that the early European part of her career largely undocumented. She livedinto the 20th century, but it is generally thought that the quality of her work declined. By 1914 she had to give up paintingbecause of poor eyesight.Upon her death in 1926, Cassatt was honored by a number of memorial exhibitions, andremains one of the most acclaimed American-born artists. She is still the subject of major exhibitions, such as "MaryCassatt, Modern Woman," which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. A traveling exhibition, it included 100 ofthe most beautiful of her paintings, the first traveling retrospective of her work in 30 years.