(1844-1926) Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh, on May 23, 1844. As a seven-year-old child, she made her first trip to Paris with her family in 1851 and went on to Germany in 1852. The family returned to Paris in 1855 to go to the World's Fair, where the young Cassatt would have been exposed to new works by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugene Delacroix.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Cassatt was tutored in French by her mother. She enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1861. Although her father did not approve of her career choice, he supported Cassatt in her move to Paris in 1866.

Women were not allowed to study at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but Cassatt did find teachers with whom she could study. After a year in Paris, Cassatt spent the next eight years traveling in Europe. She returned to America at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris in 1870.

In 1872, Cassatt returned to Europe when she was commissioned by the bishop of Pittsburgh to make copies of two Correggio paintings in Parma, Italy. In 1875, her friend Edgar Degas, invited her to join the Impressionist group. As she told her original biographer, Achille Segard, "I accepted with joy. I hated conventional art. I began to live."

Portrait Prints & Posters
Portraits of Children Prints & Posters
Impressionist Prints & Posters

References:
Mary Cassatt by Sophia Craze; (1990) Crescent Books.; New York, NY
World Book Macintosh Edition; Contributor: Contributor: Sarah Burns, Ph.D., Associate Prof. of Fine Arts, Indiana Univ. at Bloomington.