Tea at Trianon: How Mary Cassatt Became an Important Impressionist Figure

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

How Mary Cassatt Became an Important Impressionist Figure

"Woman with a pearl necklace"

"Lilacs in a Window"

"The Cup of Tea"

From My Modern Met:

As Cassatt's career was largely based in Europe, it is no surprise that traveling abroad as a child is what sparked her interest in art. In the 1850s, Cassatt spent many years in Germany and France, where she picked up the languages and developed an interest in drawing. Following her return to Philadelphia, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she began to study painting in 1861.

While her parents supported her interest in the arts, they—like many other people during this time—did not deem it a suitable career for a woman. Nevertheless, she continued her artistic education until 1865, when she grew tired of the restraints placed upon female students. One year later, she moved to Paris, France, where her career came to fruition. (Read more.)