Mary Cassatt, an American in Picardy, one of the only female impressionist painters

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born on May 22, 1844 in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and died at the age of 82, in Le Mesnil-Théribus, in her castle of Beaufresne, in the Oise. A place to which she remained attached for more than thirty years. Story of an artist’s life, marked by independence and audacity.

“Mary Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, in the United States, where I went sometimes, in a small village called Allegheny“, explains Guy Vadepied, the author of the book Mary Cassatt, the Impressionists and Americapublished by Encrage editions, in 2014. A fine connoisseur of Méru and its surroundings, where he was mayor, deputy and PS general councilor for 25 years. “A village of which his father was also the mayor“, s’amuse Guy Vadepied.

“The general council of Oise financed an association in charge of disabled children at the Château de Beaufresne, in Mesnil-Théribus. This is how I discovered the incredible story of this American woman who left everything for the love of Art.“, specifies Guy Vadepied.

Little Mary is born into a large family : she is the fourth of five children. A family descended from French emigrants, who arrived in the 17th century on American soil to flee persecution against Protestants. Moreover, his mother, Katherine, speaks French fluently. His parents belong to the good bourgeoisie.

In 1851, they moved to Europe to try to treat Mary Cassatt’s brother, Robbie, who died in 1855 of bone cancer. “Siblings, the death of his brother, then later of his sister Lydia, will be determining elements of his future workexplains Guy Vadepied. It is heartbreaking for her, especially the death of Lydia, to whom she is very close. The themes of childhood and motherhood will be recurring in her paintings. They will also make its reputation, its trademark.“

Also in 1855, the family returned to live in Pennsylvania. But the seed was sown, because Mary, then a child, took advantage of her stay in Paris to visit museums and learn French.

The birth of an artist against all odds

At the end of the 1850s, Mary Cassatt took her first drawing lessons in the United States, but she was disappointed by this learning. She returns to Europe, accompanied by her mother. In 1865, Mary Cassatt announced to her family her intention to stay in France to study art, “which causes a very big falling out with her father, who does not understand the strength of this desire in his daughter“, explains Guy Vadepied.

She assiduously attended all the most fashionable art workshops at that time in Paris. She is 21 ans. “It should be noted that on 19^e century, in our country, women do not have the right to enter the School of Fine Arts. At the time, misogyny was rife in the artistic community“, continues the author.

They are also prohibited from cafes and brasseries, eminent places of the artistic excitement which dominates Parisian life. “The 19th^e is such an astonishing, exciting century ! It’s Victor Hugo and it’s Mary Cassatt“, he enthuses.

Through persistence, Mary Cassatt obtained her Louvre copyist’s card. And in 1868, she presented a first work which she signed with the name of her grandmother, Stevenson. This table, The Mandolin Playerwas accepted at the Paris Salon of Painting and Sculpture where she discovered Manet and Courbet, major artists of the 19th century.

“But the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 broke out, says Guy Vadepied. A long journey followed for the young artist between her country of origin and major European cities. : Rome, London, Turin, Parma, where she learned the difficult art of engraving, of which she would become a great specialist. She also discovered Spain, the Prado Museum in Madrid, then finally Antwerp“.

A long journey that refines his vision and technique. Upon her return to Paris, she exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon and eventually attracted the attention of painter Edgar Degas. “A major encounter in the journey of Mary Cassatt, explains Guy Vadepied. It was in fact under his leadership that she joined the Impressionist movement, a pictorial movement which advocated the rejection of academic rules and a closer proximity to reality. And over the years, Mary Cassatt will become one of the leaders of this movement which has shaken up the world of painting.“.

“Mary Cassatt will maintain a fairly complex relationship with Degascontinues the Isarian author. We got lost in conjectures : were they lovers, friends ? No one knows. But he will paint it and draw it sometimes. Mary, who will never have children, and will never marry, has always been absolutely discreet, with great modesty, about her private life.“.

In this circle of painters, breaking with conventions, Mary Cassatt, who stands out for her taste for portraits rather than landscapes, makes new friends, including Camille Pissarro, her future neighbor in Oise. , where he lives, in Éragny-sur-Epte. She also became friends with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé and, above all, Berthe Morisot, doyenne of the Impressionist movement. “Through his contact, Mary Cassatt will also develop feminist ideas“, indicates Guy Vadepied.

The 1890s were decisive in the career of the American artist. With the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, she became an advisor to wealthy American patrons, eager to invest in this new wave of impressionism. “But it was only from 1904 that her work was revealed to the public, in her country of origin. And that same year, she received the Legion of Honor from her friend Georges Clémenceau, the future President of the Council, during the Great War.“.

Finally, after several stays in the Oise, on the advice of her friend, the painter Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt ended up acquiring the Château de Beaufresne in Mesnil-Théribus, a modest village of a few hundred souls. The year is 1894 and she will never again leave this rural area where she comes to recharge her batteries and work.

Mary Cassatt lived for 32 years in her Château de Beaufresne, from 1894 to 1926. She had her new summer vacation spot fitted out to meet modern comfort standards. : running water, central heating, bathroom. And landscaped the park with a vegetable garden, rose bushes and fruit trees. She receives her family, her friends, French and American.

“At first, the locals are surprised by this rich foreigner who has enlisted the services of a lady-in-waiting and a driver. They call her ‘Miss Cassatt’ and find her a little haughty, distantspecifies Guy Vadepied. But little by little, she totally embraces the cause of this Picardy village“.

“The one who frequented the richest men of her time, the Rockefellers, Morgan, Carnegie or Vanderbilt, will become attached to the fate of Mesnil-Théribus. She finances the first school and the first teacher in the village, and ensures that each child is given a Christmas toy. In short, she becomes the benefactor of the inhabitants“.

Moreover, Mary Cassatt is inspired by the women and children of this small country to make them the subjects of her works. “Reine Lefèvre, a resident of Méru, was his favorite model“, adds Guy Vadepied.

His affection for the inhabitants of the country is unwavering. “In 1909, when the buttonmakers’ strike broke out, 99 days of a very harsh conflict, which set the Méru region, where mother-of-pearl was worked, on fire, Mary Cassatt gave her full support to the tablet and buttonmakers.“.

At the end of the 1890s, Mary Cassatt became friends with a couple of American patrons, the Havemeyers, whose wife, Louisine, became a very close friend. “Both women played a key role in promoting Impressionism in the United States“, explains Guy Vadepied. In 1915, Louisine organized a major exhibition of works that her friend advised her to acquire, for the benefit of the suffragettes, a movement that both ardently supported. The majority of this invaluable collection can be found today ‘today at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, definitive testimony to Mary Cassatt’s very sure taste for the French masters of impressionism.

“She herself sold her paintings very wellGuy Vadepied tells us again. She was covered with distinctions across the Atlantic and was the subject of numerous exhibitions. It can be said that she enjoyed fame during her lifetime.“.

But Mary Cassatt has diabetes and is gradually losing her sight. She stopped painting in 1914 and became permanently blind in 1921. She died on June 14, 1926.The day before her death, she was in Parissays Guy Vadepied. Feeling her strength declining, she then asked to return to her castle of Mesnil-Théribus, where she died at the age of 82. years. At the end of her life, her mood was affected by the successive bereavements she experienced. She lost three of her siblings and both parents“.

On the day of his burial, in the Saint-Louis cemetery, Mesnil-Théribus, the whole village gathered to pay a final tribute to the woman who had chosen to be buried in Picardy land, alongside her loved ones, her brothers and sisters, and her parents, in the same vault.

“I felt immense pleasure in telling the story of this extraordinary woman, who left behind a considerable, enormous body of workconcludes Guy Vadepied. What struck me, what I remember, is his independence, his passion, his absolute love of painting, which guided all his choices..”