Mary Cassatt At Work, Defying the Odds as a Female Artist

Not only is her work accomplished, with devotion to the craft studied over a lifetime, but she also created during a time when women were supposed to stay at home as housekeepers and mothers. “Women should be someone, not something,” she said.

Born near Pittsburg in 1844, by the time she was 16, Cassatt knew she wanted to be an artist. This single-minded focus enabled her to withstand the many setbacks she endured during a lifetime as a female artist. Cassatt attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and at 21, she traveled to Paris where Léon Gérôme took her on as a private student. 

Three years later, she exhibited a painting at the Paris Salon, and did so five more times in the 1870s. Returning to Philadelphia at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, she was commissioned to paint copies of two Correggio paintings by the bishop of Pittsburg, warranting her return to Europe.

Cassatt’s dedication is evident in her colorprints with drypoint and aquatint. Degas had introduced her to printmaking, and she produced 215 prints in her career, after her first in 1878. In 1891, she did a “bravura” suite of color aquatints for her first solo exhibition of her career, at 48. 

The ten prints are a remarkable accomplishment considering the labor-intensive nature of printing and the difficulty in handling the materials. Cassatt executed multiple techniques in a single print: soft ground with drawing; drypoint by etching into copper plates; aquatint; and layers of color inking. 

Pissarro said of these prints, “Miss Cassatt has realized… the tone, even, subtle, delicate, without stains or seams, adorable blues, fresh rose, etc.… and the result is admirable, as beautiful as Japanese work, and it’s done with printer’s ink!” In the print, Woman Bathing, Degas’ comment, “I do not admit that a woman can draw like that,” is a clear example of what Cassatt was up against.

Mary Cassatt at Work is the first large-scale exhibition of her work in the U.S. in 25 years. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibit features 130 paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints curated by Laurel Garber and Jennifer A. Thompson. In the catalogue, Garber writes about printmaking at that time. She cites Baudelaire’s 1862 essay on etching, “Not only does etching serve to glorify the individuality of the artist, it would be difficult for an artist to describe his most intimate personality on copper.”

He describes Cassatt’s prints perfectly. She is there, skilled, experimental, clear, and strong. To find Cassatt’s brilliance, look at her prints. Labor intensive and challenging, with the intellectual control demanded of the materials, printing is the medium where Cassatt’s unique artistry shines.

Cassatt produced 320 pastels, 320 oil paintings, as well as the 215 prints in her lifetime. She wrote to a friend, “Of course very few women work. I mean as a profession, so they don’t know that fatigue… Nothing takes it out of one like painting.” Because she was determined to be an artist, her family insisted that her art pay for itself. 

To accomplish this, she chose to never marry or have children. Even though she is best known for her mother and child portraits, like Maternal Caress, the “mothers” in the portraits were mostly paid models with no relation to the child, which may be why we don’t often see the mother’s face full-on and are unable to read her expression.

Cassatt’s many pastels certainly have the stroke and feel of Degas, whom she admired greatly. “The first sight of Degas' pictures was the turning point in my artistic life, “ she stated. The pastel, In the Loge, is one of several works by her that Degas owned and kept in his studio until his death.

When she was 35, she was asked to join the Impressionist group including Manet, Courbet, and Degas. She was ecstatic, and two years later, showed eleven works at the fourth Impressionist exhibition, where they were all well-received.

Cassatt proceeded to exhibit her work at the fifth and sixth Impressionist exhibitions and moved between Paris and Philadelphia for the rest of her life, always working. She died in 1926 in France at the age of 72.

Mary Cassatt at Work at the Philadelphia Museum runs through September 8, 2024. The show allows the viewer to see the work of a serious artist, which Cassatt always called herself. Today, we would not question her commitment and expertise. However, in a world where she faced not only the difficulties every artist faces in a competitive and market-driven art world, being a woman in Philadelphia and Paris in the late nineteenth century was a monumental battle that she clearly won.