Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) American, dry point etching, "The Manicure". Showing a mother with child in her lap.

Condition: Some foxing, spots, discoloration.

Overall Size: 21 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.

Sight Size: 9 x 7 in.

#1132

Mary Cassatt was born in 1844 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. She lived with her mother in Europe from 1851 to 1858, studying in Paris, Parma, and Seville, before returning to America to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865. In 1868 she had her first painting exhibited at the Paris Salon, and began to work alongside Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the Impressionists. Much of her early work was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1870, when she fled back to America to escape the Franco-Prussian War. In 1878 she sent two of her paintings to exhibit with the Society of American Artists, making them some of the first Impressionist works shown in the New World. From 1879 to 1886 she was one of only three women to exhibit with the Impressionists, and the only American woman. At the 1881 Impressionist Exhibition Cassatt first displayed pictures of the mother and child theme for which she is best known. After the final Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Cassatt began to experiment more widely, transforming her imagery with references to Old Master Madonna and Child paintings as well as Japanese prints. Gradually she abandoned Impressionist work for paintings that emphasized shapes and forms, as well as becoming increasingly involved in women’s rights causes. Her relationship with Degas is still hotly debated today, as neither of them ever married but spent most of their artistic lives together, eventually falling out over the Dreyfus Affair and artistic disagreements in the 1890s, remaining close (but never collaborating) until his death in 1917. By 1914 she had to give up painting because of poor eyesight, and after her death in 1926 her reputation grew until she became one of the most acclaimed female artists of all time.