Young Mother Sewing
Mary Cassatt
MARY CASSATT, 1900. OIL ON CANVAS.
Cassatt was in the first generation of ‘New Women’, riding the waves of early 19th century feminism to universities and freedom. The only American impressionist, she had a close, likely platonic, relationship with Degas, each fuelling, critiquing and improving the other. Yet, after 10 years with the group, she abandoned him and the movement. Cassatt was fiercely independent, across every element of her life, and she resisted the constraints of working within a group of artists. Instead, she turned her eye to the domestic, feminine scenes she saw around her. The latter years of her life were dedicated to painting scenes of mothers and daughters – dignified and quiet, without drama or politics, they are contemporary versions of renaissance compositions, Madonna and Child updated to the tribulations of contemporary motherhood.