Cassatt (Treasures of Art)

MARY STEVENSON CASSATT (1844-1926) was a highly unlikely figure to have become the first American painter to achieve a notable place in the development of the first modern avant-garde international movement in art.
The privileged daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphian broker, Cassatt was encouraged to paint as part of the social attributes of many young girls of her class. This was not equal to her need to become a serious painter as she enrolled in the Philadelphia Academy, beginning a career which resulted in her eventual participation in the development of Impressionism and a close friendship with Degas.
Her first great interest was in the work of the great masters of Italian and Spanish art; but on her arrival in Paris, she came to admire new young painters such as Courbet and Manet. Her studies were successful and she exhibited in the Salon of 1872, meeting Degas in 1874 and exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1879.
The subject that most captured her interest was the relationship between mother and child and much of her oeuvre is devoted to exploring the many aspects of this theme.
Her haughty independence isolated her from most of the Impressionist group but she was an important conduit through which French art was introduced to the American public.