Mary cassatt biography video for students

On May 22, 1844, Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of seven children born to a wealthy American family with a French background.  Her family valued education and saw travel as a means to that end, so that by the time Mary Cassatt was ten she had traveled to Europe with her family visiting Germany and France, particularly Paris.

But she actually began her studies in painting back in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.  Unhappy with the pace of her learning, Cassatt decided to study the masters on her own, moving to Paris, and copying the pieces on display in the Louvre.  Considered “always a lady,” Cassatt traveled to Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Holland studying the works of the great masters such as Correggio, Velázquez, and Rubens.

In 1877 it was Degas who encouraged her to show her work with the other Impressionists.  This was a perfect fit for an artist who insisted on breaki