{{Художник
| фон              = 
| имя              = 
| имя при рождении =
| портрет          = 
| ширина           = 
| заголовок        = 
| дата рождения    = 
| место рождения   = 
| дата смерти      =
| место смерти     = 
| национальность   = 
| жанр             = 
| учеба            = 
| стиль            = 
| работы           = 
| покровители      = 
| влияние          =
| влияние на       =
| награды          = 
| викисклад        = 
}}

thumb|right|Автопортрет, 1878, [[музей Метрополитен]]
'''Мэри Кассат''' () (Эдгаром Дега. Мотивом для её полотен послужили образы социальной и личной жизни женщин, с особым упором на тесную связь матерей и детей.

== Ранний период ==
Кассат родилась в городе Аллегени, штат Пенсильвания, являющемся в настоящее время частью Питтсбурга. Её отец, ''Роберт С. Кассат'', был успешным биржевым брокером, а её мать, ''Кэтрин Джонстон Келсо'', была родом из банковской семьи. Мэри Кассат росла в семье, где поездки за рубеж считались неотъемлемой частью образования; в десять лет она уже побывала во многих столицах Европы, включая Лондон, Париж и Берлин.

Несмотря на то, что семья Мэри возражала против её желания стать профессиональным художником, она начала изучать живопись в Пенсильванской Академии изящных искусств в Филадельфии (1861—1865). Нетерпимая к неспешному темпу обучения и покровительственному отношению со стороны мужской половины студенчества и преподавателей, она решила продолжить изучение самостоятельно, и в 1866 г. она переехала в Париж.

thumb|left|''The Boating Party'' 1893-94, [[Национальная галерея искусства, Вашингтон]]
Вернувшись в Соединенные Штаты в начале франко-прусский войны, Кассат проживала со своей семьей, но в то время в небольшом городке было трудно найти меценатов для поддержки её занятий живописью и модели для рисования. Её отец продолжал сопротивляться выбранному ею ремеслу и оплачивал только её основные жизненные потребности. Она вернулась в Европу в 1871 г., когда архиепископ Питтсбургский поручил ей сделать копии картин в Италии, после чего она смогла свободно путешествовать по всей Европе.

thumb|right|300px|''Чай''. [[1880). Мэри Кассат, музей изящных искусств, Бостон]]
== Импрессионизм ==
После самостоятельного обучения в крупных европейских музеях, её стиль стал более зрелым к 1872 году и в Париже она изучала  живопись вместе с Камилем Писарро.

В 1872 году жюри Парижского Салона допустило к показу её первое полотно. Критики утверждали, что цвета её полотен слишком ярки и, что её портреты слишком точны для того, чтобы соответствовать оригиналу.

Увидев пастели Эдгара Дега в окне магазина по продаже картин она поняла что была не одинока в своем мятеже на Салон. "Я пришлось подойти и прижать нос к окну, чтобы впитать все, что я смогла бы из его живописи", писала она к другу. "Это изменило мою жизнь. Я увидела искусство таким как я хотела его увидеть." Она встретилась с Дега в 1874 году, и он пригласил её учствовать в выставке импрессионистов и её работы были выставлены на экспозиции в 1879 году. 

Будучи активном членом движения импрессионистов до 1886 года, она оставалась друзьями с Дега и Бертой Моризо. Как и Дега, Кассатт стала чрезвычайно искусной в использовании пастели, в конечном счете выполняя многие свои полотна в этой технике.

thumb|left|''Летняя пора (деталь)''  ок. 1894, [[Музей Арманда Хаммера, Лос-Анджелес]]
Вскоре после первых успехов импрессионистов, Кассат бросила живопись чтобы ухаживать за своей матерью и сестрой, которые заболели после переезда в Париж в 1877 году. Её сестра скончалась в 1882 году, но мать поправилась, и Кассат возобновила занятия живописью в середине 1880-х годов.

Её стиль изменился, и она отошла от импрессионизма к более простому, прямому стилю. С 1886 года, она больше не отождестляла себя с каким-либо движением и пробовала различные стили. Серия строго написанных, тонко подмеченных, несентиментальных картин о матери и ребенке является основной темой её наиболее известных работ.

В 1891 она выставила серию весьма оригинальнух цветных литографий, в том числе "Купающаяся" и "Прическа", вдохновленная работами японских мастеров показанными в Париже за год до этого.

{{Infobox Artist
| name          = Mary Cassatt
| image         = Mary Cassatt-Selfportrait.jpg
| imagesize     = 240px
| caption       = ''Self-portrait'' by Mary Cassatt, c. 1878, New York
| birthname     = Mary Stevenson Cassatt
| birthdate     = 
| location      = Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| deathdate     = 
| deathplace    = Château de Beaufresne, near Paris, France
| nationality   = American
| field         = Painting
| training      = Charles Chaplin, Thomas Couture
| movement      = Impressionism
| works         = 
}}

'''Mary Stevenson Cassatt''' (American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. 

Cassatt (pronounced ca-SAHT) often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

==Early life==
Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pittsburgh. She was born into favorable circumstances: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family.  The ancestral name had been Cossart.<ref>Nancy Mowll Mathews, ''Mary Cassatt: A Life'', Villard Books, New York, 1994, p. 5, ISBN 0-394-58497-X.</ref> Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri.<ref>Perlman, Bennard B., ''Robert Henri: His Life and Art'', page 1. Dover, 1991.</ref>Cassatt was one of seven children, of which two died in infancy. Her family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she began schooling at age six.

Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. She had her first lessons in drawing and music while abroad and learned German and French. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 11</ref>Her first exposure to French artists Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, and Courbet was likely at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855.  Also exhibited at the exhibition were Degas and Pissarro, both of whom would be future colleagues and mentors.<ref>Robin McKown, ''The World of Mary Cassatt'', Thomas Y. Crowell Co. , New York, 1972, pp. 10-12, ISBN 0-690-90274-3</ref>

Even though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, 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.<ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 26</ref>Part of their concern may have been Cassatt’s exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students, of which one was Thomas Eakins, later the controversial director of the Academy.  About 20% of the students were female. Though most were not bent on making a career of art, they viewed art as a valid means of achievement and recognition, and a socially valuable talent.  Cassatt, instead, was determined to become a professional artist.<ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 18</ref>

Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said, “There was no teaching” at the Academy. Female students could not use live models (until somewhat later) and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts. <ref>McKown, 1974, p. 16</ref>

Cassatt decided to end her studies (at that time, no degree was granted). She finally overcame her father’s objections and in 1866, she moved to Paris, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 29</ref> Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, she applied to study privately with masters from the school. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 31</ref>Clearly skilled, she was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and his depiction of exotic subjects.  A few months later Gérôme would also accept Eakins as a student. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 31</ref>Cassatt augmented her artistic training with daily copying in the Louvre (she obtained the required permit, which was necessary to control the “copyists”, usually low-paid women, who daily filled the museum to paint copies for sale). The museum also served as a social meeting place for Frenchmen and American female students, who like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized.  In this manner, fellow artist and friend Elizabeth Gardner met and married famed academic painter William Bouguereau.<ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 32</ref> 

Toward the end of 1866, she joined a painting class taught by Charles Chaplin, a noted genre artist.  In 1868, Cassatt also studied with artist Romantic style of Corot and Couture,<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 47</ref> and is one of only two paintings from the first decade of her career that can be documented today.<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 54</ref>The French art scene was in a process of change, as radical artists such as Courbet and Manet tried to break away from accepted Academic tradition and the Impressionists were in their formative years. Cassatt’s friend Eliza Haldeman wrote home that artists “are leaving the Academy style and each seeking a new way, consequently just now everything is Chaos”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 32</ref>Cassatt, on the other hand, would continue to work in the traditional manner, submitting works to the Salon for over ten years, with increasing frustration, before striking out with the Impressionists.

''The Boating Party'' 1893-94|thumb|left| ''The Boating Party'' by Mary Cassatt, 1893–94, oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 46 in., [[National Gallery of Art, Washington]] 
Returning to the United States in the late summer of 1870—as the Franco-Prussian War was starting—Cassatt lived with her family in  Altoona. Her father continued to resist her chosen vocation, and paid for her basic needs, but not her art supplies.<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 75</ref> She placed two of her paintings in a New York gallery and found many admirers but no purchasers. She was also dismayed at the lack of paintings to study while staying at her summer residence. Cassatt even considered giving up art, as she was determined to make an independent living. She wrote in a letter of July, 1871, "I have given up my studio & torn up my father's portrait, & have not touched a brush for six weeks nor ever will again until I see some prospect of getting back to Europe. I am very anxious to go out west next fall & get some employment, but I have not yet decided where." <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 74</ref> She traveled to Chicago to try her luck but lost some of her early paintings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. <ref>McKown, 1974, p. 36</ref>Shortly afterward, her work attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Pittsburgh, who commissioned her to paint two copies of paintings by Correggio in Parma, Italy, advancing her enough money to cover her travel expenses and part of her stay. In her excitement she wrote, “O how wild I am to get to work, my fingers farely itch & my eyes water to see a fine picture again”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 76</ref>With Emily Sartain, a fellow artist from a well-regarded artistic family from Philadelphia, Cassatt set out for Europe again.

thumb|right|300px|''Tea'' by Mary Cassatt, 1880, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 36 1/4 in., [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]]

==Impressionism==
Within months of her return to Europe in the autumn of 1871, Cassatt’s prospects had brightened. Her painting ''Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival'' was well received in the Salon of 1872, and was purchased. She attracted much favorable notice in Parma and was supported and encouraged by the art community there, “All Parma is talking of Miss Cassatt and her picture, and everyone is anxious to know her”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 79</ref> 

After completing her commission for the archbishop, Cassatt traveled to Madrid and Seville, where she painted a group of paintings of Spanish subjects, including ''Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla'' (1873, in the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution). In 1874, she made the decision to take up residence in France. She was joined by her sister Lydia who shared an apartment with her. Cassatt continued to express criticism of the politics of the Salon and the conventional taste that prevailed there. She was blunt in her comments, as reported by Sartain, “she is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern art, disdains the Salon pictures of Cabanel, Bonnat, all the names we are used to revere”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 87</ref>Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor.<ref>Mathews, 1998, pp. 104-105</ref> Her cynicism grew when one of the two pictures she submitted in 1875 was refused by the jury, only to be accepted the following year after she darkened the background. She had quarrels with Sartain, who thought Cassatt too outspoken and self-centered, and eventually they parted. Out of her distress and self-criticism, Cassatt decided that she needed to move away from genre paintings and onto more fashionable subjects, in order to attract portrait commissions from American socialites abroad, but that attempt bore little fruit at first. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 96</ref>

In 1877, both her entries were rejected, and for the first time in seven years she had no works in the Salon.<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 100</ref> At this low point in her career she was invited by Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety. The Impressionists (also known as the “Independents” or “Intransigents”) had no formal manifesto and varied considerably in subject matter and technique.  They tended to prefer open air painting and the application of vibrant color in separate strokes with little pre-mixing, which allows the eye to merge the results in an “impressionistic” manner.  The Impressionists had been receiving the wrath of the critics for several years. Henry Bacon, a friend of the Cassatts, thought that the Impressionists were so radical that they were “afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of the eye”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 107</ref>They already had one female member, artist Berthe Morisot, who became Cassatt’s friend and colleague. 

thumb|right|Degas, ''Portrait of Miss Cassatt, Seated, Holding Cards'', c. 1876-1878, oil on canvas
Cassatt admired Degas, whose pastels had made a powerful impression on her when she encountered them in an art dealer's window in 1875. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could<!-- OK here: don't correct it--> of his art," she later recalled. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it."<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 114</ref> She accepted Degas' invitation with enthusiasm, and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist show, planned for 1878, which (after a postponement because of the World’s Fair) took place on April 10, 1879. She felt comfortable with the Impressionists and joined their cause enthusiastically, “we are carrying on a despairing fight & need all our forces”. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 118</ref>Unable to attend cafes with them without attracting unfavorable attention, she met with them privately and at exhibitions. She now hoped for commercial success selling paintings to the sophisticated Parisians who preferred the avant-garde. Her style had gained a new spontaneity during the intervening two years. Previously a studio-bound artist, she had adopted the practice of carrying a sketchbook with her to record the scenes she saw, out-of-doors and at the theater. <ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 125.</ref> 

thumb|left|''Summertime'', c. 1894, oil on canvas
In 1877, Cassatt was joined in Paris by her father and mother, who returned with her sister Lydia. Mary valued their companionship, as neither she nor Lydia had married. Mary had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career. Lydia, who was frequently painted by her sister, suffered from recurrent bouts of illness, and her death in 1882 left Cassatt temporarily unable to work.<ref>Mathews, 1998, p. 163</ref> 

Cassatt’s father insisted that her studio and supplies be covered by her sales, which were still meager. Afraid of having to paint “potboilers” (sentimental themes for quick money) to make ends meet, Cassatt applied herself to produce some quality paintings for the next Impressionist exhibition. Three of her most accomplished works from 1878 were ''Portrait of the Artist'' (self-portrait), ''Little Girl in a Blue Armchair'', and ''Reading Le Figaro'' (portrait of her mother). 

Degas had considerable influence on Cassatt. She became extremely proficient in the use of pastels, eventually creating many of her most important works in this medium. Degas also introduced her to copper engraving, of which he was a recognized master, which strengthened her control of line and overall draftsmanship. She became the subject in his series of etchings recording their trips to the Louvre. They worked side-by-side for awhile, and she gained considerably from his technique and knowledge.  She had strong feelings for him but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature. The sophisticated and well-dressed Degas, then forty-five, was a welcome dinner guest at the Cassatt residence. <ref>McKown, 1974, pp. 63-64</ref>

The Impressionist exhibit of 1879 was the most successful to date, actually making a profit for each member and saving the group from the “profound desolation” which had reigned “in the Impressionist camp”. The success came despite the absence of Renoir, Sisley, Manet and Cezanne, who were attempting once again to gain recognition at the Salon.  Through the efforts of Gustave Caillebotte, who organized and underwrote the show, the group made a profit and sold many works, although the criticism continued as harsh as ever. The ''Revue des Deux Mondes'' wrote, “M. Degas and Mlle. Cassatt are, nevertheless, the only artists who distinguish themselves…and who offer some attraction and some excuse in the pretentious show of window dressing and infantile daubing”. <ref>McKown, 1974, p. 73</ref>

Cassatt displayed eleven works, including ''La Loge''. Although critics claimed that Cassatt’s colors were too bright and that her portraits were too accurate to be flattering to the subjects, her work was not savaged as was Monet's, whose circumstances were the most desperate of all the Impressionists at that time.  She used her share of the profits to purchase a work by Degas and one by Monet. <ref>McKown, 1974, pp. 72-73</ref>She exhibited in the Impressionist Exhibitions that followed in 1880 and 1881, and she remained an active member of the Impressionist circle until 1886. In 1886, Cassatt provided two paintings for the first Impressionist exhibition in the United States, organized by art dealer Harry Havemeyer in 1883, and with Cassatt as advisor, the couple began collecting the Impressionists on a grand scale. Much of their vast collection is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.<ref>Mathews, 1994, p. 167</ref> She also made several portraits of family members during that period, of which ''Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and His Son Robert Kelso'' (1885) is one of her best regarded. Cassatt’s style then evolved, and she moved away from Impressionism to a simpler, more straightforward approach. She began to exhibit her works in New York galleries as well. After 1886, Cassatt no longer identified herself with any art movement and experimented with a variety of techniques.