Essay on Edgar Degas and his influence on the art of Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born on May 22, 1844 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. She came from a rather large family who moved quite frequently. Mary loved to draw and no matter the location or where she lived, she would always find the time to draw. It wasn’t very long until she was interested in more than just drawing. As soon as she discovered that there were more objects, such as canvas and cloth for oil painting, to work with, she decided to try painting. Painting was just the beginning for Mary and soon after had the dream of one day settling in Europe where she would become a painter for a living. Not only was Mary very stubborn, she was also very determined to make her dream a successful reality.

I choose to research Joan Mitchell because I did not know very much about her or the type of artist she is. Joan Mitchell is a second generation member of the abstract expressionist group and was a very well respected painter of her time. She was born on February 12, 1925 and died on October 30, 1992. Joan was born in Mitchell was born in Chicago Illumines however, most of her career took place in France and she was one of the eras few female painters. She was so well respected that her paintings and prints can be seen in major museums and collections across the United States and Europe. Her paintings often covered two separate panels. “An admirer of Vincent van Gogh's work, Mitchell observed in one of his final paintings – Wheatfield with Crows (1890) – the symbology of death, suicide, hopelessness, depression and darkness. With her sense that Wheatfield with Crows was a suicide note, she painted a painting called No Birds as a response and as an homage”. Joan was a painter who was influenced by many others and incorporated others ideas in her paintings. I think that this is one of the reasons why she is so well respected. Joan’s most notable awards were: “1991 Le Grand Prix des Arts (Peinture) of the

Berthe Morisot was born in 1841, a time when it was still quite difficult for women to become professional artists as the art world was predominantly male. She continually faced criticism and encountered difficulties due to her sex. Despite this, Morisot was able to establish herself as a respected artist whose work only continues to become more highly regarded with time. Her place in art history alongside such Impressionist artists as Claude Monet, Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas, is a testament to her ambition. She was an artist who “aspired to greatness” who “was not content to take second place.” Her painting Young Woman Knitting of 1883 is a excellent example of her style and technique. To fully comprehend how this painting is typical of her work, it is helpful to study her life, as well as her artistic development, especially in her paintings.

was a pioneer and led the way for future female painters to have the courage to become

Mary Cassatt is known world-wide for her impressing art in which she focuses mainly in the everyday life of women and children. She is an American artist born in Pennsylvania on May 22, 1844, but later relocates to Europe in 1866 to pursue to work in art. This was mainly due to her family’s and society’s objections to women in the field of art. There she met and befriended famous Impressionist Edgar Degas. Because of her close friendship with Degas, she grew courage to continue to do art in her own way. She continued to paint until she slowly began to lose her eyesight and later died in 1926. Cassatt was part of the Impressionist style movement, in which she painted portraits unlike many others who painted landscapes (biography.com). Her artwork

Other things that had an influence on her was the Civil War, the women's suffrage movement, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Ecole des Beaux-Art school in Paris. Her father did not want her to be a professional painter, he wanted her to be more or less a housewife. I believe this was one of the major regions she felt tied to the women's suffrage movement. She wanted to do and be who she wanted without being discriminated by men such as her father. One painting that represents this belief is The Mandolin Player, It depicts the portrait of a young girl playing a Mandolin

She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first became friends with Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the early age of fifteen, and continued her studies during the years of the American Civil War. Diagnosed

Mary Cassatt was an American painter and a printmaker. She was born May 2nd 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh, and died June 14, 1926. She was born into a middle class family of 7, and visited Europe often as a child. Growing up she became fascinated with art, and started painting as a teenager. Her adult life was lived in France, and was known for creating images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children (Marycasset.org). One of her most famous piece’s is the “The Child’s Bath”, which is an 1893 oil painting by Cassatt. In the painting Cassatt, got her ideas from Japanese prints, and incorporated her style as

Mary Cassatt graduated high school in 1861 at the age of seventeen. Drawing was her passion, with a failed attempted to convince her father to send her to Europe to study art; she started her studies in art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her father had hopes that once she finished her studies, she would settle down getting married and start a family of her own. Cassatt completed her four years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1865; during that time period it was unheard of for a young woman to become a professional artist, in this male dominant filed (Witkoski, 2016). Cassatt was a very modern thinking woman for her time and after her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she successfully convinced her father that she needed to learn more in Europe (Stafford PTSA, 2017).

Despite the struggles she had to face in her time, Mary Cassatt ended up overcoming those obstacles, becoming one of many famous Impressionist artists during the nineteenth century and created memorable paintings such as Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, Mother and Child, and The Loge.

In 1787 However, she was kicked out of David’s studio on account of she was a female and the royal arts administration not being fond of the two sexes working admits each other. In 1799 while in artistic independence, she created The Portrait of a Lady, in her hometown of Paris, France. This was one of three paintings that she had shown, at the Salon through their open exhibit policy. However, showing this painting at the Salon and past artist affiliation caused the provocation of controversy for many years to

Women played a very distinct, yet changing role at the end of the 1800s. With that role they also saturated the realm of art, almost completely eclipsing men. This dominance of the female figure in art was partly the fault of the arguably chauvinistic attitude that the turn of the century male had in regard to women. Women of the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s were an extension of the man’s success and station in so-ciety. They were to be beautiful and helpless, completely reliant on the man.

Edgar Degas was a French artist, which was known as an Impressionists. He was born on the 19th of July, 1834, in Paris, France. His full name was Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas. Degas went into practice law. In 1855, he enrolled at the famous School of Fine Arts, in Paris, where he studied under Louis Lamothe, a pupil of the classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

In September 1886, a group of young women artists organized a club strictly for art

In Edgar Degas’s life females were featured in more than 1/3 of his art works. Did Degas treat his female subjects in his works of art, including a pastel on paper and paintings differently because of their status in society? The paintings, pastel on paper; which will be mainly used to compare this, will be The Portrait of a family (The Bellelli Family), Woman Bathing (from 1884) and Portrait of Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards. These works of art; and the series they belonged to have many similarities, but they also have their differences too.