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Mary Cassatt; Painter of Modern women art
Introduction
Mary was born to a happily upper-middle class family with her father being a stockbroker and her mother worked with a banking family that was prosperous. From 1851 to 1855, Mary together with her family lived in France and Germany that gave her a good early exposure art and culture of the European. As a child, she also learned German and French which later served her well in her career while living abroad. In 1855, Mary had visited the Paris World's Fair where she viewed the arts of various individuals such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and even Eugene Delacroix.
In 1860 when she was at the age of 16, she undertook a study for a period of two years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and by 1865 Mary requested her parents of they could let her continue with her studies abroad in artistic training. Mary then went to Paris despite the initial objections of her parents and studied with Jean-Leon Gerome. When Cassatt briefly went backto the United States between 1870 and 1871, she got frustrated with the lack of resources and the opportunities. Cassatt went back to Paris and visited other nations such as Italy, Spain and even Holland where she got familiar with the works of the various artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio da Correggio and Diego Velazquez.
The main subject for Cassatt was primarily mothers and children. Her main artwork was not based on the individuals who commissioned her to paint them. She used models, and in some cases used friends or the working women to depict the mothers and in the pictures, the children were not real kids to the mothers. Thus Mary's paintings were stage paintings that portrayed still life with people other than flowers or fruits. The life circumstances thus drove her work. In the book, Mary establishes a deliberate message with her artwork portraying contemporary women and female domain and also delivers a message on the motherly pledge as a system of both the emotional and the physical development. The communication seems to be a reaction to the reality of the social concerns towards the end of 19th century.
At the period, regulations were getting passed as a protection of the children from exploitation and only the mothers who were in the upper class had the ability to take care of their kids from death caused by nutrition. In her paintings, she also passed on a message by including the mothers who did not look upper class forming a compelling message in the book.
In the 19th century, childhood and children were much significant due to the belief that healthy children could lead to the establishment of a healthy country. However, in 1870s several families were needy, and it was not a healthy period for childhood in life. This led to the enactment of the legislation on education, childhood labor and even to the protection of the children from abuse by the parents.
The interest that Cassatt had in the theme concurred with the era of social change, but the interest she had had gone beyond social concerns to that of seeing the vivacious physicality among the kids that she moved to her paintings. Also, Cassatt in her pictures that represented kids, she also began a procedure of restructuring the space in the images in a manner that passed on information that depicted a new sense of governance of the space.
The governance arises from the point of view of an individual within the space and not from the people who are looking at the paintings. Cassatt had painted a little girl that had seated in the blue chair, relaxed and scornful in her pose that had imitated a pose of seductress and control of the space of the painting. In the painting, Cassatt displays another factor of the little girl of the belief in the late 19th century that the children, because they were not already completely socialized had retained a significant impulsiveness that civilized community ought to value as well as imitate.
The portrait of a little girl 1878 by Cassatt.
Even though Cassatt was viewing the Renaissance icons of the ideal motherhood, the child paintings she made represented an idealized statement about the adoration of the motherhood both in the deception and reality. For the portrayal of the icon of motherhood, Cassatt gets involved in doing several things that are noteworthy. In the first instance, her mothers have not idealized women a factor that is clear when an individual views their hands. Secondly, in some of her paintings, for example, the ‘childbirth" an individual can see the engagement between the child and the mother in a regular day to day activity of life. Just in the same way as the family representation had become a genre picture in the mid of 19th era, she made a picture of both the mother and the child to a genre painting (Griselda Pollock, 1998). Making the mother and the child have a close and a central unit that got transmitted not just by their physical association but the conformation of the portrait. In all the instances represented as below, the child and the mother fill in almost all the entire picture and the unity of both get enhanced in one case. The compositions of the Cassatt has two important influences. The photography that made several painters think regarding cropped, close-up images and the Japanese woodcuts while avoiding the perspective in the treatment of space.
Cassatt: Mother and child
Although in the above painting Cassatt does not have the mirrors in them, though she often uses the mirrors. However, in the other paintings, she employs the use of the mirrors to permit the women and the children in a given picture and the mother in another painting to complete a significant section of the picture. In other paintings that involve the mirror, it may represent a remark on the pride of female and the desire of delight as an individual looks at herself in the mirror. Also, since the reproductions are not a reality, when a significant part of the picture that is not real as well is a replication, there is a double interpretation on the function of painting as something that can get reconstructed into a reality, and this realizes the image an individual want it to be.
Cassatt: Reading the Le Figaro, 1878. The mirror.
In the book, Cassatt accepts both the restrictions of the women sphere and resist them from the Representation of the little girl to her pictures of the women at opera. In this pictures, she seems to acknowledge the social boundaries of the subject matter necessary for female artists. However, through the reconstruction of the traditional subjects, she gives a challenge to the status quo together with the artistic. The paintings that involve the mirrors are essential since they provide an impression of a woman looking at herself in the mirror and also shows the woman is oblivious to the reflection. This shows that instead of being the passive object to draw the attention of others, for instance, the male often looks at the female, she has instead become active (Griselda Pollock, 1998). The woman looking at herself in the mirror can become a metaphor for the female artist who has an active look at the world that gives another mirror image in the paintings of Cassatt. The meaning is even made stronger in her paintings by the utilization of her mother as she reads the French newspaper and the mother was fluent enough in reading the newspaper in French. From the painting, it can be seen that she was reading the first page that could have presented the most important information of the day when compared to the social or fashion declarations. The paintings show three main things; a great woman who commands the paintings through her body, a well-educated woman and also a woman having an interest in the outside world.
Cassatt also had an image of Lydia, her sister that presents a female that has established herself as egotistical seeking attention to be admired by others though Cassatt challenged her intellect as a person who just exposes herself to get attention.
Lydia in a lodge, 1879.
Even though her sister as the subject in this work appears to be alone, the paintings show her reflected against the mirror revealing her back. Cassatt uses the mirror so that it produces a reflection to make her sister occupy space that otherwise would be occupied by a man. The woman appears to stare at something instantly and enjoys it. Like other several paintings done by Cassatt, she chooses placements situated with in the framework, in such a manner that she occupies a oblique quota of the canvas starting from the higher corner of a given flank and ends on another side that is at or beneath the woman's knees. Encompassing the totality of the scene.
Conclusions
Cassatt had chosen a feminine subject in the book in her artwork and designs and her exposition in Chicago, the murals portrayed the current style of dress that showed the control of the women on their space and not only in the presence of the men that was true to the social certainties of the time. She had questioned the traditional ways in which the women got represented through her actions by representing them in a different way.
The artwork done by Mary Cassatt included the light palette and the loose brushwork of the impressionism with the contents getting influenced by the art of the Japanese together with the old masters of Europe working with several media in her career. The versatility in Mary to institute the professional accomplishment at a time when only a few women got regarded as serious artists. The artwork of Cassatt that depicted a domestic setting in and of the world, cleverly did not depict the limits that existed in which as a woman were restricted to her as compared to the amount of public spaces available to her male contemporaries who had the freedom to exhibit (Broude, 2000). The materials and skills she presented were disregarded and minimalized as essentially feminine while several detractors duly noticed that she indeed fetched substantial technical skill and the mental perception of the subject matter selected by Cassatt for her canvas. However, she continued with her paintings and used the mirror to produce a reflection that would fill the space with inanimate objects that would have been images of males due to the absence of female participation on the social scene at that period in history when society was largely represented by men and factually most people disregarded women in the period before women's rights, socially, politically and professionally.
With her business acumen in concert with the friendship and the professional relationships he had with the artists, dealers and even the collectors on every side of the Atlantic, Mary established herself as an essential figure in the 19th century and helped create the taste for the impressionist art in the United States.
References
Broude, N. (2000). Mary Cassatt: a Modern Woman or the cult of true womanhood? Woman's Art Journal, 21(2), 36-43.
Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Women (World of Art) Paperback - September 1, 1998, Used fromby Griselda Pollock.