WOMAN IN ART
dicated; a marked contrast to the tasks imposed on women by the necessities of primitive times, as depicted by Mary MacMonnies.
Miss Cassatt had accomplished meritorious work before the Columbian Fair. She was a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., born in 1845. She not only studied in Paris, but France had a lure that kept her there many years. From 1874 her pictures were accepted at the Salon, and from 1878 they were to be seen in the National Academy of Design in New York, and in Boston. The characteristic scenes in France and Spain had a charm that furnished her with subjects she loved to paint. "At the Theatre," "The Music Lesson," "After the Bull Fight," and figure-pictures found their way to many galleries and private collections.
In spite of travel in the art-blessed countries of Europe, and her absorbing of technique studied with Monet and Renoir, it was the forceful personality and broad humanity of Degas that influenced her work. He recognized in Miss Cassatt a strong spirit and absolute sincerity, a mind of broad scope and originality. In maturer years Miss Cassatt painted almost entirely women and children. Some familiar canvases are "The Bath," "In the Garden," "Playing With the Cat"; "The Mother's Caress" of her two-year-old daughter comes nearest to having an indescribable charm. The little one is on her knees on mother's lap and the mother holds her close, as the dimpled fingers press her cheek and the baby eyes seem to read the mother-love—seriously.
In such intimate subjects Miss Cassatt was at her best. Such is the beautiful message of her art to the world, the love and confidence of mother and child.
"Mother and Child," from the American Exhibition of Art in Berlin, accents this message, for the child is older, and there is more of understanding, and love is deeper. "Breakfast In Bed with Mother" is a picture of absolute content, sitting close to mother within her enclosing arm, dimpled knees, pink toes, some breakfast in each baby hand. It has a charm that anything more of detail in the painting would have marred. It is one of the very best, broadly painted yet with thought and brush centered on the little one, so happy to be with mother. Modernism or impressionism or any other ism, nor what painter or school does the brush-work resemble, none of these enters into one's enjoyment when looking into the sweet picture of life. It is an influence left to an art-loving world from which the artist has passed on—June 20, 1926, at Mesnil-Theribus, Oise, a suburb of Paris.
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