Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born in Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh) into a prosperous family; her brother Alexander later became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Cassatt began formal art studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the age of fifteen, over her family's objections.

Barred as a woman from the École des Beaux-Arts, Cassatt moved to Paris and studied privately with academic masters including Jean-Léon Gérôme and copied old masters in the Louvre.

Cassatt's painting A Mandoline Player was accepted for exhibition at the official Paris Salon, her first major professional recognition.

After the interruption of the Franco-Prussian War, Cassatt returned to Europe and made France her permanent home for the rest of her life.

Invited by Edgar Degas, Cassatt showed eleven works at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, becoming the only American in the group, and exhibited in three further group shows.

Influenced by a Paris exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblocks, Cassatt produced a set of ten drypoint and aquatint prints regarded as landmarks of printmaking.

Cassatt was commissioned to paint the large mural Modern Woman for the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; the work was later lost.

In recognition of her contributions to art, the French government made Cassatt a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

Nearly blind from cataracts and having stopped painting around 1914, Cassatt died at her country home, the Château de Beaufresne at Le Mesnil-Théribus, at the age of 82.