Under the Horse Chestnut Tree Mary Cassatt Postcard

Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree by Mary Cassatt, etching and aquatint print in color, 1896-1897, depicts a young mother seated on green grass beneath a large tree holding her infant son aloft in her hands. The dark haired woman wears a patterned yellow skirt and pink-grey blouse that harmonize with the warm green of grass and the tuft of leaves hanging overhead. Cassatt sensitively draws the figures in delicate outlines around flat areas of vivid color in a manner reminiscent of Japanese prints, as in her other prints that are hallmarks of the etching printmaking medium. The theme of mother and child became a constant as the artist matured in her later career. Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 - 1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became an important member of the French Impressionist movement of art. Born in Pennsylvania, Cassatt studied abroad in Europe as a young woman, where she began her first studies in art. Dedicating herself to art, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, until she moved to Paris in 1866 to study with Jean-Leon Gerome of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and became a copyist in the Louvre. By 1874 Cassatt had a studio in Paris but struggled to exhibit in the official French Salon, until Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist exhibitions. Degas tremendously influenced Cassatt, about whom he wittily remarked "No woman has the right to draw like that", and the two artists had a close working relationship for years as Mary absorbed Degas' drawing, composition, and mastery of the mediums of pastel and etching. Cassatt posed for a number of paintings by the elder artist, and created her own unsentimental, rigorously drawn figure paintings of scenes from modern life, notably many paintings on the theme of mother and child. Her series of highly original colored prints in etching and aquatint are an unsurpassed landmark in the history of art, influenced by the elegance of classical Japanese printmakers. An early feminist and supporter of women's suffrage, Cassatt painted prolifically until well into old age, exhibiting at the notorious American Armory Show of 1913.