I recently watched a thoughtful documentary about the life and work of the American artist Mary Cassatt. (‘Painting the Modern Woman,’ 2023, directed by Ali Ray)

Cassatt created paintings of happy domesticity and maternal love. She produced pioneering prints of serene beauty. And she forged a career for herself in the face of a fiercely conservative establishment – demanding that she be considered ‘someone and not something.’

'I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work.’
Mary Cassatt

Cassatt, born into a wealthy family in Pittsburgh in 1844, was raised in Philadelphia. As a child she travelled throughout Europe, and at 15 she set her heart on becoming an artist. Having studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 1866 she moved to Paris, with her mother and family friends accompanying her as chaperones. There she took private lessons and visited the Louvre each day to copy Old Masters. She began submitting her work to the Paris Salon, the home of traditional Academic art, and in 1868 she had her first success.

'I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! The concentration it requires, to compose your picture, the difficulty of posing the models, of choosing the color scheme, of expressing the sentiment and telling your story.’

Cassatt returned briefly to the United States during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But her paintings were rejected by dealers there, and she received no commissions. And so she set off for Europe once again, studying and working in Parma, Madrid and Seville. In 1874 she settled in Paris, where she remained for the rest of her life. She was joined by her sister Lydia and then her parents.

Though Cassatt had some success at the Salon, with time and rejection she became frustrated by its snobbish, unadventurous jury system. Then in 1875 she was taken aback by some pastels by Edgar Degas that she spotted at an art dealer's.

'I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.'

Degas and Cassatt struck up a friendship and conferred often about each other’s work. She evolved her technique, composition and use of colour and light, and in 1877 he invited her to show with the Impressionists, who had been holding their own exhibitions for a few years. She felt liberated, and from that point on remained an active member of the group until 1886, the only American officially associated with them.

‘At last I could work absolutely independently without worrying about the possible opinion of a jury… I hated conventional art. I was beginning to live.’

Lydia quietly reads the paper, sews and crochets in the garden. She works at a tapestry and takes tea with a friend. Here she is in an elegant yellow gown, seated in a private box at the opera; here driving a carriage, a niece at her side, a young groom at her back. A pensive girl in a plain white chemise arranges her hair in a neat ponytail. A bored infant sprawls across a blue armchair, legs akimbo. A loving mother bathes her sleepy child, feeds her, caresses her and gives her a goodnight kiss.

Cassatt’s subjects do not perform or present. We do not see them as objects of admiration or desire. They are simply individuals inhabiting their own private worlds. These are intimate scenes, yet the characters remain independent, elusive.

In 1890 Cassatt was inspired by an exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts. 

‘I dream of it and don’t think of anything else but color on copper.’

She responded with a series of her own drypoint and aquatint prints that conveyed the lives of modern females. 

A fashionable lady looks on as a seamstress adjusts her fitting. An attentive hostess offers her bonneted friend a biscuit. A woman at a desk, deep in thought, prepares to send a letter. A half-dressed woman arches over a washstand to bathe. Another perches on a bed as she adjusts her hair in the mirror.
Cassatt’s prints are delicately coloured, exquisitely simple.

Of course, Cassatt’s wealth had afforded her a great deal of opportunity. But she had to battle prevailing sexism every step of the way. She was not allowed to study nudes at the Pennsylvania Academy, working instead from plaster casts. In Paris she was barred from attending the École des Beaux-Arts. She was constantly chaperoned and restricted by propriety from painting urban scenes. 
Throughout her life, Cassatt was a consistent advocate for female equality, campaigning for women’s right to vote and for girls’ education. She summed up her position with elegant clarity:

'Women should be someone and not something.’

These words still resonate today, and I think they have an application beyond the battle against sexism. 
In the world of work there is a tendency to regard employees as anonymous assets, cogs in a machine, numbers on a spreadsheet; as a resource to be maximised, an investment to be realised, a headcount to be reduced. But progressive modern leaders know that dynamic, effective businesses are propelled by cultures that treat employees as individuals, with their own strengths and weaknesses; their own unique personalities and potential.

Employees should be someone and not something.

Cassatt went on to help establish a taste for Impressionism in the United States and she acted as an advisor to some of the great American collectors. She also became a role model for young American artists who sought her advice. She died in 1926, aged 82, at Château de Beaufresne near Paris. She is remembered as a quiet revolutionary.

'Acceptance, under someone else's terms, is worse than rejection.’
 
Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
My next post will be on Thursday 9 January 2025.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'All the lights are coming on now.
How I wish that it would snow now.
I don't feel like going home now.
I wish that I could stay.
All the trees are on display now.
And it's cold now.
I don't feel like going home now.
I wish that I could stay.'
The Raveonettes, 'The Christmas Song’ (R Wells / M Torme)

No. 499