Mary Cassatt Picture Study Aid and Art Prints

Mary Cassatt Picture Study Aid

No woman has the right to draw like that.

EDWARD DEGAS, UPON SEEING CASSATT’S “TWO WOMEN PICKING FRUIT” FOR THE FIRST TIME

I get a lot of searches for various artists on my website, some more than others. Most of them are men, some of them from the Renaissance, but one female name that pops up repeatedly is Mary Cassatt. Given the subject matter for which she is most well-known – that being of women and children – it’s not surprising on a site that caters to homeschooling families. I like to think, though, that it’s not just her subject matter that draws people to her. Her talent and skill and the way she forged her own path in a world that expected her to live a different life than the one she chose can also serve as inspiration for anyone.

Ironically, despite her subject matter being primarily of a maternal theme, she never married and never had children. Though she was born in Pennsylvania, she chose to live the majority of her life in France, immersing herself in the world of Impressionism that was taking Paris by storm. And while she was born into a very wealthy family and didn’t need to rely on commissions to put bread on the table, she still treated her artistic pursuits as a professional might. She improved her skill, experimented with different media, and learned from other artists around her.

At the same time, the fact that she didn’t need to rely on a steady income meant that she could paint what she wanted. Even while not pursuing a life of motherhood for herself, she saw the beauty of these relationships, and she was able to bring in a unique (to the art world, at least) perspective when she painted them. I also like to think that because she was a woman, her sitters were far more comfortable living out their domestic scenes for her than they might be with a male artist. Because of this, she has bequeathed the world a rich treasure-trove of glimpses of domestic life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the point of view of a woman.

The intention of this Picture Study Aid is to equip the home educator with some basic facts and understanding of a sampling of the work of Mary Cassatt. It is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis or study of each piece or a complete biography of the artist.

About picture study, Ms. Mason recommended keeping learning as simple as possible, especially in the younger years, and put extra emphasis on the images by themselves.

There is no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life, the first and most important thing is to know the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as else-where we shut out the middleman. (vol 6 pg 216)

Definite teaching is out of the question; suitable ideas are easily given, and a thoughtful love of Art inspired by simple natural talk over the picture at which the child is looking. (PR Article “Picture Talks”)

…we begin now to understand that art is not to be approached by such an acadamised road. It is of the spirit, and in ways of the spirit must we make our attempt. We recognise that the power of appreciating art and of producing to some extent an interpretation of what one sees is as universal as intelligence, imagination, nay, speech, the power of producing words. But there must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures themselves. A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail.” (vol 6 pg 214)

This Picture Study Aid is meant to offer basic information about the artists as well as ready answers should your student ask about a particular aspect of a piece and the explanation isn’t readily evident. Ms. Mason emphasized not focusing on strict academic discourse when doing picture study, but rather simply exposing students to the art itself:

His education should furnish him with whole galleries of mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new;––…––in fact, every child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings, sculpture, beauty of form and colour in things he sees. Perhaps we might secure at least a hundred lovely landscapes too,––sunsets, cloudscapes, starlight nights. At any rate he should go forth well furnished because imagination has the property of magical expansion, the more it holds the more it will hold. (vol 6 pg 43)