September, 2013 - Mary Cassatt - Rock & Rye Cooler

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.  
     Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15.  Part of her parents' concern may have been Cassatt's exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students.  In 1874, she made the decision to take up residence in France.  From the beginning, she expressed  criticism of the politics of the Salon and the conventional taste that prevailed there. Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor. At this low point in her career she was invited by Edgar Degas  to show her works with the Impressionists.  She accepted Degas' invitation with enthusiasm, and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist show. In 1877, Cassatt was joined in Paris by her father and mother, who returned with her sister Lydia. Mary valued their companionship, as neither she nor Lydia had married. Mary had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career. 
     Cassatt's popular reputation is based on an extensive series of rigorously drawn, tenderly observed, yet largely unsentimental paintings and prints on the theme of the mother and child. In 1891, Chicago businesswoman Bertha Palmer approached Cassatt to paint a mural about "Modern Woman" for the Women's Building for the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in 1893. The central theme was titled Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science. The left panel was Young Girls Pursuing Fame and the right panel Arts, Music, Dancing. The mural displays a community of women apart from their relation to men, as accomplished persons in their own right. Unfortunately the mural was lost when the building was torn down after the exhibit. Diagnosed with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts in 1911, she did not slow down, but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. Nonetheless, she took up the cause of women's suffrage, and in 1915, she showed eighteen works in an exhibition supporting the movement.

the drink:

Rock & Rye Cooler

1 ½ oz vodka

1 oz rock and rye

½ oz lime juice

Drinkability: 5
Drunkability: 2
Taxic Diversity: 3

Accessibility: 4

Priority for Conservation: 2

Comments: "OK if you need to get rid of rock 'n rye"

From American Women Artists of the 20th C. hosted by FluffyRuffle