Art History: English and American Artists (part 1)

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was born on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. She was an Impressionist painter.

Impressionism is a painting style. In Impressionism, you paint quickly and with little details, normally using strong and bright colours.

For example, in a Mary Cassatt painting, you see little detail, but it’s easy to see the people and objects.

Mary Cassatt was special. She was a woman in a job with very little women. It was very difficult for a woman to study in a good painting school, so she studied alone. She studied in Paris, Spain, Belgium and Rome. Paris was the most important city for Impressionists, so she lived in Paris for a long time.

Mary loved to paint portraits. A portrait is a painting of a person or some people. She painted a lot of families together in a very natural way.

Look at these paintings

What can you see? What painting do you like most?