How Mary Cassatt pioneered printmaking

Explore a timeline of Mary Cassatt's career

This collection from The Art Story situates Cassatt's major works chronologically and provides historical context, allowing you to see how her interactions with both the French Impressionists and Japanese printmaking influenced her work.

Explore Mary Cassatt's colorful 'Set of 10' prints, inspired by her interest in Japanese woodblocking.

How Cassatt experimented with the then-new medium of pastels

Cassatt is primarily noted for her paintings and prints, though she also experimented with pastels, a novel medium for the 19th century. Art scholar Marjorie Shelley walks through one of Cassatt's pastel works with a close analysis of 1914's "Mother and Child."

See a collection of Mary Cassatt's artwork

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's digital collection includes 15 of Cassatt's works, including several iconic watercolors, like "Portrait of the Artist" and "Mother Playing with Child." Alongside them, you can read helpful contextual information assembled by Cassatt scholar H Barbara Weinberg.

How Cassatt's early life influenced her art

The painter came from an affluent background but was determined to become an artist, a decision that was at odds with her father's wishes. Still, she began art school at 15, where she was one of the few female students and not permitted to paint portraits of live models. This brief documentary from The Art Tourist explains how those formative experiences taught Cassatt to challenge conventional approaches in her work.

Explore a feminist reading of Mary Cassatt's work

Artsy's Olivia Horn considers the American Impressionist's work from a 21st-century perspective, unpacking how her focus on women's lives was a revolutionary act for the 19th century that still resonates today.

Mary Cassatt carved space for women in the Impressionist movement

The painter was one of three women to exhibit with the French artists, and the only American. Cassatt broke ground by focusing on subjects largely ignored by the male-dominated art world, such as maternity and womanhood.

What made Mary Cassatt's art radical

Although the American Impressionist's work is sometimes dismissed as overly sentimental, these Cassatt specialists argue that her portrayals of women are often subtly subversive, emphasizing how they defy the gender norms of the time.

Mary Cassatt's 'The Child's Bath' was a rare sight for 19th-century art

Drs. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker note that this portrait of an intimate moment between mother and daughter might have been out of place in 1893, but that its subject matter alludes to spiritual images from the Renaissance or Baroque periods.

Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas both influenced each other's work and challenged one another to try new techniques in their painting, though their relationship eventually soured for unclear reasons.

One Mary Cassatt painting features a sly political message

Critics had long been puzzled by the unrealistic flower pinned to the woman's chest in the 1905 painting "Mother and Child." In exploring the painting's history, researcher Nikki Georgopulos discovered that the flower alluded to a women's suffrage badge popular at the time, something Cassatt emphasized in the painting's original title, "Woman With a Sunflower."

Hear a quick but insightful analysis of Mary Cassatt's 'The Boating Party'

Karen Jackson travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to study an oil painting from 1893, walking listeners through a close reading of the canvas. Even if you can't make it to the museum, you can pull the image up and follow her guided analysis.

Scholars note that many Cassatt paintings are about women's labor

The women in her portraits are often performing domestic work, something that contemporary scholars consider a subtle protest of how women's labor was often overlooked during Cassatt's time. Fittingly, Cassatt often hired working-class women as models, ensuring the portraits were not only accurate but that the subjects were appropriately compensated.

Mary Cassatt's sister, Lydia, moved to Paris to manage her household so Mary could focus on her painting, a dynamic that inadvertently turned Lydia into her sister's muse.

Cassatt painted more than just mothers and daughters

In one 1884 portrait, she captured her brother, Alexander Cassatt, and her nephew during a family holiday. The image is just as tender as her paintings of mothers and daughters, with the father and son—their faces near mirror images—in an intimate embrace.

Mary Cassatt helped establish the impressionists' legacy in the US by persuading wealthy patrons to collect their work.

Comparing the impressionism of Monet and Cassatt

Claude Monet and Mary Cassatt were both Impressionists, but that's not all they had in common. This quick comparative analysis of Monet's "The Beach at Trouville" and Cassatt's "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair" shows how both paintings subtly comment on the class of their subjects.

2 art historians break down Mary Cassatt's 'Little Girl in a Blue Armchair'

Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris analyze Cassatt's 1878 painting, highlighting how the perspective places viewers on the same level as the child portrayed and how this affects our impression of the little girl.

Cassatt participated in a fundraiser for women's suffrage against her family's wishes.

O’Keeffe’s first collection of charcoal drawings was influenced by Japanese artists

Prioritizing personal interpretations over literal ones, O’Keeffe’s abstract drawings challenged the classical approach to capturing nature in art. This initial set of drawings caught the attention of art dealer Alfred Stieglitz and forever changed the trajectory of her career.

Learn how to make a print like pop artist Andy Warhol.

Mary Cassatt was not a fan of Mother's Day

When Mother's Day was first proposed as a holiday in 1913, the American Impressionist opposed it, believing that women's suffrage was a far more important issue. The holiday was established by an act of Congress in 1915; Congress did not pass the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, until 1919.

Andy Warhol’s famous works employed a 'machine-like' technique

Warhol’s silk-screen printing style—rough, noticeably imperfect, and painterly—was the result of a refined technique in service of a grainy tabloid aesthetic.

Photography was invented by a romantic artist

The invention of photography changed the landscape of art forever. The first photographs were created by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a romantic era printmaker, by using light and chemistry to expand upon images produced by the earlier camera obscura.

Japanese artwork often incorporates bold colors, clean lines, and natural subjects

While Japanese art is diverse and continues to adopt new styles and techniques, the Japanese approach to painting nature inspired Georgia O’Keeffe, who was known for depicting the environment in a detailed yet realistic manner. Below is "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," from 1931, by Hokusai.

O’Keeffe made more than 2,000 pieces of art in her lifetime

See an interactive timeline that provides insight into just how prolific the artist was. Differentiated by year, the visualization shows when she was particularly active, and allows you to see the artwork from each year. Below is "Oriental Poppies" from 1928.

Mary Cassatt created a massive mural titled "Modern Woman" for the 1893 World's Fair, but it mysteriously disappeared after the fair ended and hasn't been found since.

What techniques did cave painters use to create their work?

Cave paintings long predate local craft stores and premade paints, so what techniques and tools did cave artists use to create such long-lasting works? This video gallery details how ancient artists inscribed and painted their work on cave walls, specifically the Chauvet cave in France.

Thomas and Anne Rogers were famous counterfeiters in 17th-century England

The pair used a practice called “coin clipping,” shaving the edges off silver coins to decrease their weight before sending them back into circulation. When banknotes rather than coins gained popularity, counterfeiting methods evolved—in the 1700s, an early banknote counterfeiter named Mary Butterworth created counterfeit paper money using starched cloth and a hot iron to transfer the pattern of a banknote onto paper.

Jackson Pollock and others developed 'action painting,' highlighting the creative process

A subcategory of performance art, action painting emerged in 1945 as a way to capture a moment-by-moment view of the creative process through painting. For these pieces, the physical act of painting is as important as the finished product. This short explainer video covers the philosophy behind action painting, as well as exploring the works of several well-known action painters, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko.

Scientists used mass spectrometry to determine the materials in a 1690 painting

Previously used to map the distribution of molecules on biological tissue samples, researchers combined the technique with machine learning to uncover six layers of pigments, binders, and a thin gold leaf layer within *The Marriage of the Virgin*, from a collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The technique may help identify and track artists' material use to learn about pieces of unknown provenance. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

O’Keeffe’s journey to become an artist started at a young age in Wisconsin

In 1905, she left behind her life on the farm to attend art school in Chicago. While studying, the artist won the William Merritt Chase prize for a still life. Her style eventually evolved and caught the attention of important figures in the New York art scene.

Gutai, a Japanese form of performance art, used the body as a canvas, anticipating the Westernized version of the art form by several decades.

An artist used forensic techniques to recreate Jane Austen's face

For over two centuries, there was only one accepted portrait of the writer—an 1810 sketch done by Cassandra Austen, Jane's sister. Artist Melissa Dring used that as a basis for her waxwork of the author, along with eyewitness accounts from people who'd met the writer.

The rise of the museum gift shop

While museum gift shops are commonplace now, they weren’t when the Met opened in 1870. Nevertheless, the museum was one of the first to offer copies of several of their paintings for visitors to display in their own homes. Read about how the museum gift shop has evolved and how they decide what to carry with this look behind the scenes from Artsy.

The impressionist painters—the 19th-century group that included Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, and more—got their name from a critic who used the term in a negative review, claiming they were unable to paint more realistic scenes.

How legendary artists overcame creative block

For most artists, creative block—the unfortunate experience when new ideas suddenly disappear—is inevitable. This Artsy article looks at six artists (including Picasso, Monet, and O’Keeffe) who dealt with creative block and overcame it by experimenting with new media, moving to a new place, or by sheer willpower. It also highlights one artist, Chuck Close, who claims that he never dealt with creative block because he simply viewed his artistic practice as any other job.

Picasso's 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' is seen as the start of cubism

The 1907 work rejects many of the art world norms of the time, like linear perspective and realistic depictions of light. Picasso's painting also nods to African masks, demonstrating a willingness to indulge in styles outside the Western canon.

Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi creates masterpieces using Microsoft Excel

Upon retiring, he wanted to get into art, but found the materials to be expensive. Since 2000, he has created art pieces using the line tool and other features the software provides before printing and taping together various spreadsheets that make up a completed work.

How did ancient cave painters manage to see what they were doing?

As ancient artists made their way deep into caves and created massive works of art that continue to inspire awe today, they would've required light sources to see what they were doing. This gallery details some of the light sources that cave artists...

JMW Turner inspired the impressionists

JMW Turner was a prominent member of the Romantic movement, known for his expressive, colorful, and threatening paintings of coastal and marine scenes. Later in his career, he pushed his style to more intense colors and abstract forms, inspiring and preceding the abstract art movements, like Impressionism.

Mabel Dodge Luhan facilitated art from Georgia O'Keeffe and others

Mabel Dodge Luhan was a writer, but she's better known art patron. She organized the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York that introduced European modernism to the US and invited artists (including Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, and Robinson Jeffers) to Taos, New Mexico, to cultivate a "Paris West."

How Monet’s paintings changed the way we see London

Between 1899 and 1901, legendary French Impressionist painter Claude Monet produced over 100 paintings of London consistently shrouded in fog. Art historians claim this series left a permanent mark on how we perceive the capital city, inevitably layered in obscuring and dramatic mist. See some of the paintings and read more here.

The history of metallurgy: an interactive timeline

Humans have long been shaping metals into useful tools and aesthetic accessories. By 8,700 BCE, humans already had mastered four types of casting copper. Within a few thousand years, people were combining metals to make the alloy bronze and had...

Works of art on motherhood at the Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City contains one of the world's most prestigious collections, and this page draws together classic and contemporary works created around the theme of motherhood.

The long-lost art of coded postage stamps

In the 1800s, the postcard was a relatively new phenomenon, as was the post office. In the burgeoning system, recipients of mail had to sometimes pay prohibitively costly fees to receive it. So to get around the fees, a system of placing stamps on the envelopes in specific ways to communicate—a simple yes or no—was devised by clever mailers and expanded and codified by postcard companies into guides. Learn about the fascinating system here.

Picasso was one of the 20th century's most influential artists

The artist is recognized as one of the inventors of cubism, which simplified figures and scenes into flattened geometric shapes and imagined arrangements. The movement spurred new styles in response and led to increasingly abstract art. Styles like futurism, dada, De Stijl, and art deco were built on the simple forms, abstract ideas, collage, and found objects of early cubism.

Rune Elmqvist forwent practicing medicine to invent the first inkjet printer

The Mingograph recorded real-time physiological signals from a patient's electrocardiogram, helping doctors diagnose heart and brain conditions. Eight years later, in 1958, Elmqvist worked with cardiac surgeon Åke Senning to develop the first fully implantable pacemaker.

Picasso’s early masterpiece conceals a long-lost secret

Art historians have studied Picasso's Blue Period throughout the last century, but researchers have now uncovered something previously unknown: an underpainting of a woman under one of the artist's portraits.

The history of iconic pigments used in seven famous paintings

While art paints can be bought by the bucket at any craft store today, pigments throughout history have been difficult to come by. Art historian Kelly Grovier traces the fascinating history of pigments that make up hidden layers in masterpieces from Picasso and Hokusai’s Prussian Blue to Vermeer’s shade of red.