" Love of A Mother " Images by Mary Cassatt

Written by Hector Edelstein Tuesday, 09 November 2010 15:56

Columbus, GA.- The Love of a Mother focuses on the theme of motherhood and its many facets as examined by important American artists. The exhibition includes more than a dozen works in a variety of media and styles and represents the first official display of Mary Cassatt’s Sara and Her Mother with the Baby. 1901, a pastel acquired by the Museum in 2005. The Cassatt is accompanied by other works from the Columbus Museum’s collection as well as selected works from several area museums. On View until May 14, 2006 at The Columbus Museum. Mary Cassatt is well known in North America. But when Europeans talk or write about Impressionism, names like Monet, Manet, Renoir, Sisley or Pissarro are mentioned. But few know the American woman artist Mary Cassatt. Is it because she was a woman and an American? Her beautiful art work has earned her a place in the pantheon of the great Impressionist artists. Mary Cassatt was born in 1844 in Pennsylvania, USA as the daughter of a wealthy merchant. At the age of seven her family left for Paris in France. After a few years of life in Paris, the family went back to the USA. Mary, impressed by all the art she had seen in Europe, surprised her parents by the wish to become an artist. Becoming an artist in the 19th century was as difficult for a woman as becoming a doctor. Society then had a different understanding of the role of women. Finally Mary won and her parents allowed her to visit the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1866 she went back to Paris. She copied the old masters in the Louvre and other museums. The young woman artist had acquired pretty good skills in traditional art style and in 1872 a Mary Cassatt painting was even accepted by the judges of the Salon. Then she got to know Edgar Degas, an artist from the group of Impressionists who were refused by the Salon and had established their own show, the Salon des Refuses. Edgar Degas introduced her to his friends Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and other Impressionist rebels. Visit The Columbus Museum of Art

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