THE FITTING

Cult Art

Fine Art Giclée Print

Co-created and published by PINEAPPLE GALLERY

Print Dimensions: 28CM X 42CM

Original Works: Mary Cassat

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh‘s North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of “les trois grandes dames” (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879, Diego Martelli, compared her to Degas, as they both sought to depict movement, light, and design in the most modern sense.

Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into an upper-middle-class family:  Her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator. He was descended from French Huguenot Jacques Cossart, who came to New Amsterdam in 1662. Her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family. Katherine Cassatt, educated and well-read, had a profound influence on her daughter.To that effect, Cassatt’s lifelong friend Louisine Havemeyer wrote in her memoirs: “Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt’s mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that [Mary] inherited her ability.”The ancestral name had been Cossart. A distant cousin of artist Robert Henri, Cassatt was one of seven children, of whom two died in infancy. One brother, Alexander Johnston Cassatt, later became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she started her schooling at the age of six.

Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music. It is likely that her first exposure to French artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, and Gustave Courbet was at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855. Also in the exhibition were Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, both of whom were later her colleagues and mentors.