Mary Cassatt
American Figure and Portrait Painter
1844 – 1926 A.D.

Mary Cassatt, an American figure and portrait painter, born in Pittsburgh. In 1875, after a brief course at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, she went to Europe. She studied the masters of the Renaissance in Italy, and in Spain the paintings of Velasquez, who exercised a strong influence on her art. In 1879 she removed to Paris, where she thereafter resided.

Her subjects are most invariably women and children, particularly mother and child, in the environment of home. The children, especially, are depicted with truth, originality, and a remarkable power of observation.

At the Chicago Exposition of 1893 Miss Cassatt decorated the north tympanum of the Women’s Building with a mural painting entitled Modern Woman.

She is represented in the Metropolitan Museum by Mother and Child, and special exhibitions of her work have been held in Paris, New York and Boston.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.