Mary Cassatt the famous French Impressionist Painter

Mary Cassatt

1844-1926

American Impressionist Painter

Her Style Was Influenced by the following Painters - Manet, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley.

Education - Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia

Cause of Death - complications from diabetes

Biography

Mary Cassatt felt that modern life should be recorded in a lively modern style. She focused on domestic scenes: mothers and children, scrubwomen, village girls, seascapes, gardens, cats, and family life. She sought to capture the overall impression of a scene through effects created by using light and color in diverse ways. Cassatt liked to work outside, observing nature directly and record fleeting atmospheric effects with his brush.
She believed that light was inseparable from the object it illuminated, so to capture the light at a precise moment, she worked from direct observation. Cassatt executed this emotional style with bold strokes and graceful applications of color. Over time she became less interested in external reality, and more in the spiritual qualities of his subjects. "The misunderstanding in art has arisen from the fact that forty years ago to be exact thirty-nine years ago when Degas and Monet, Renoir and I first exhibited, the public did not understand, only the 'elite' bought and time has proved their knowledge. Though the Public in those days did not understand, the artists did. ... Now the Public say -- the foreign public -- Degas and the others were laughed at; well, we will be wiser than they."

In the early part of her career Cassette's art was not taken very seriously - at the time Impressionism was loathed by most art critics and public alike, as outrageous and unseemly and revolutionary.

Mary Cassatt Chardin Quotations

I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work. -- Mary Cassatt

Why do people so love to wander? I think the civilized parts of the World will suffice for me in the future. -- Mary Cassatt

I think if you shake the tree, you ought to around when the fruit falls to pick it up. -- Mary Cassatt

No Frenchman of any standing in the art world has ever taken any of these things seriously. As to Matisse, one only has to see his early works to understand him. His pictures were extremely feeble in execution and very commonplace in vision. As he is intelligent, he saw that real excellence, which would bring him consideration, was not for him on that line. -- Mary Cassatt

I'd hate to catapult myself into the presence of God or even the death angel by my own hand, having myself destroyed the life that God gave me. -- Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Key Descriptive Words and Phrases associated with Impressionism - Parisian cafe Culture, 19th-century, Paris, soleil levant, Louis Leroy, open composition, impasto, vibrant, effets de soir, natural light, en plein air, 1874, Académie des Beaux-Arts, boating, leisure activities, Landscapes, modernization, synthetic pigments, industrialization, Independent Collective, avant-garde, Primitivism, Symbolist, France, French painters, The Académie Suisse, controversial ideas about painting, physics of colour, broader strokes, fleeting impression of colour and light, bright, vibrant, flowers, figures,

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The Principal Impressionist Painters

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Top 10 Best Quotes About Art

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Leonardo da Vinci

I dream my painting and I paint my dream. Vincent Van Gogh

I shut my eyes in order to see. Paul Gauguin

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. Leonardo da Vinci

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas

Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist. Paul Gauguin

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment. Claude Monet

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. Leonardo da Vinci

Art is either revolution or plagiarism. Paul Gauguin

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Michelangelo