Self-Portrait by Mary Cassatt Poster

Self-Portrait by Mary Cassatt, watercolor on paper c. 1880, depicts the artist seated behind her sketch pad with brush in hand, wearing a dark blue dress and tall hat with visor that shades her face tied under her chin. The painter gazes intently at the viewer as if surmising or creating a portrait of them, reversing the effect of the typical portrait painting. Cassatt deploys the watercolor medium to great effect with loose, broad, sketchy pools of liquid colors that contrast light, dark, warm and cool tones that allow the paper ground to shine through in many areas. The intent expression on her face belies the seriousness with which she took her mission as an artist, as well as capturing her warmth, empathy and humanity. Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 - 1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became an important member of the French Impressionist movement of art. Born in Pennsylvania, Cassatt studied abroad in Europe as a young woman, where she began her first studies in art. Dedicating herself to art, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, until she moved to Paris in 1866 to study with Jean-Leon Gerome of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and became a copyist in the Louvre. By 1874 Cassatt had a studio in Paris but struggled to exhibit in the official French Salon, until Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist exhibitions. Degas tremendously influenced Cassatt, about whom he wittily remarked "No woman has the right to draw like that", and the two artists had a close working relationship for years as Mary absorbed Degas' drawing, composition, and mastery of the mediums of pastel and etching. Cassatt posed for a number of paintings by the elder artist, and created her own unsentimental, rigorously drawn figure paintings of scenes from modern life, notably many paintings on the theme of mother and child. Her series of highly original colored prints in etching and aquatint are an unsurpassed landmark in the history of art, influenced by the elegance of classical Japanese printmakers. An early feminist and supporter of women's suffrage, Cassatt painted prolifically until well into old age, exhibiting at the notorious American Armory Show of 1913.