1844-1926 Mary Cassatt Galleries 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??. 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, who wrote: ??she is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern art, disdains the Salon pictures of Cabanel, Bonnat, all the names we are used to revere??. 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. 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. In 1877, both her entries were rejected, and for the first time in seven years she had no works in the Salon. At this low point in her career she was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the 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??. They already had one female member, artist Berthe Morisot, who became Cassatt??s friend and colleague. Degas, Portrait of Miss Cassatt, Seated, Holding Cards, c. 1876-1878, oil on canvasCassatt 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 of his art," she later recalled. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it." 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, declaring: ??we are carrying on a despairing fight & need all our forces??. 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 while out-of-doors or at the theater, and recording the scenes she saw. Summertime, c. 1894, oil on canvasIn 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. Cassatt??s father insisted that her studio and supplies be covered by her sales, which were still meager. Afraid of having to paint ??potboilers?? 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 etching, of which he was a recognized master. The two worked side-by-side for awhile, and her draftsmanship gained considerable strength under his tutelage. He depicted her in a series of etchings recording their trips to the Louvre. 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. The Impressionist exhibit of 1879 was the most successful to date, despite the absence of Renoir, Sisley, Manet and C??zanne, 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??. 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. 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 Paul Durand-Ruel. Her friend Louisine Elder married 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. 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.   Related Paintings of Mary Cassatt :. | Mother and son | Mother doing up daughter-s hair | Degas, Portrait of Miss Cassatt | Helene Septeuil | Child in a Straw Hat |
Related Artists:
John Charles Dollman
British, 1851-1934, He was an English painter and illustrator. Dollman was born in Hove on 6 May 1851 and moved to London to study at South Kensington and the Royal Academy Schools, after which he set up a studio at Bedford Park, London. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1870 to 1912, and was elected RWS (Member of the Royal Watercolour Society) in 1913. Dollman was also an illustrator, working in black and white or colour for magazines such as the Graphic during and after the 1880s. Some of his early work has been said to have influenced Van Gogh . A central theme was ambitious mythological pictures such as a Viking Foray, a Viking horde entitled the Ravagers, The Unknown (1912), featuring a girl surrounded by chimps and Orpheus and his Lute with Lions. He also produced bold compositions of animals and people such as Robinson Crusoe and His Man Friday, Polo and Mowgli made leader of the Bandar-log (1903) . His best known work is possibly A London Cab Stand (1888) , focussing on a group of horses in a stormy scene . He composed at least three variants of this picture, and there are other instances where he made copies or near-copies of individual pictures. In the 1890s he painted pictures of soldiers, and some less well regarded genre pictures of people with animals. He also painted wild animal pictures without attempting any narrative content . Dollman's works are in the collections of various galleries. The Immigrants' Ship (1884) is in the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide . 'The Ravager' is owned by the Trustees of the Royal Watercolour Society, London, [8]. A version of The Unknown is in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. A London Cab Stand is in the London Museum. A Dog's Home, Table d'Hote (1879) is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool , and During the Time of the Sermonses (1896), an odd picture of a pair of religious people approaching two golfers, is in the collection of the Harris Museum, Preston , while 'Famine' (1904) is at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery Dollman died on 11 December 1934, aged 83.
Jan Verhas
(9 January 1834-31 October 1896) was a genre painter and is considered the founder of the School of Dendermonde, best known for his paintings of children of the Belgian bourgeoisie, in a classical style but with a natural feeling to them. Born in Dendermonde as the younger brother of painter Frans Verhas, he studied at the Academy of Dendermonde and the Academy in Antwerp, finishing with the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1860. The Belgian government commissioned him to travel to Venice where he made the painting "Velleda et la Bataille de Callao" in 1862. The next four years, he lived in Binche, where he married. He then moved to Brussels. Verhas was a regular of the Salons of the time, winning a second class medal in the Paris Salon Exposition of 1881, and a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. He was made a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor in 1881. Jan Verhas died in Schaarbeek in 1896. Paintings by Jan Verhas can be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp and the City Hall of Dendermonde.
William Peters
(1742 - 20 March 1814) was an English portrait and genre painter who later became an Anglican clergyman and chaplain to George IV. He became known as "William" when he started signing his works as "W. Peters". Peters was born in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, the son of Matthew Peters (born at Belfast, 1711), a civil engineer and member of the Royal Dublin Society; by Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of George Younge of Dublin. The family moved from England to Dublin when Peters was young, where his father "advised on the improvement of loughs and rivers for navigation". and published two treastises on the subject. Peters received his artistic training from Robert West in Dublin; in 1756 and 1758 he received prizes from the first School of Design in Dublin. In 1759, he was sent by the Dublin Society to London to become a student of Thomas Hudson and won a premium from the Society of Arts. The group also paid for him to travel to Italy to study art from 1761 to 1765. On 23 September 1762 he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. Peters returned to England in 1765 and exhibited works at the Society of Artists from 1766 to 1769. Beginning in 1769, Peters exhibited works at the Royal Academy. In 1771 he was elected an associate and in 1777 an academician. He returned to Italy in 1771 and stayed until 1775. He also probably traveled to Paris in 1783-84, where he met Leopold Boilly, Antoine Vestier, and was influenced by the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze. On 27 February 1769, Peters became a freemason, and he was made the grand portrait painter of the Freemasons and the first provincial grand master of Lincolnshire in 1792. In 1785, he exhibited portraits of the Duke of Manchester and Lord Petre as Grand Master at the Royal Academy exhibition.