Thursday, June 19, 2014

Paintings Of Mary Cassatt And Andrew Wyeth

By Darren Hartley


Mary Cassatt paintings were products of the Impressionist movement in the later part of the 1800s. They were the outcome of a study of the works of the old masters of Europe. Mary left for Paris in 1866 and began her private art lessons in the Louvre.

The early Mary Cassatt paintings were masterpiece copies. In 1868, one of these portraits was selected at the prestigious Paris Salon. Paris Salon was an annual art exhibition ran by the French government. The well-received painting was submitted under the name of Mary Stevenson.

Mary Cassatt paintings shows Mary's dislike for narrative and her devotion to surface arrangement and color as well as to the most advanced artistic principles of her day. Mary is one of a few women, and the only American, to join a group of independent artists, later to be known as the Impressionists. Her invitation to the group came from Edgar Degas.

The medium for Andrew Wyeth paintings was the less forgiving watercolours instead of oils. His early wet brush works were made up of quickly executed, broad strokes, full of color. Shown to Robert Macbeth, a New York art dealer, these paintings formed the first solo exhibition of Andrew.

Andrew has always painted for himself and this is clearly evident in his Andrew Wyeth paintings. His brilliant Garret Room, showing the sleeping old black man Tom Clark, was produced in an impulse from the memory of a four year old Andrew, feeling anticipation and trepidation, in the middle of a Christmas night, with a stocking on his bed, containing a skinny doll stuck on its neck.

Andrew Wyeth paintings took a dramatic shift in 1945. The landscapes became more barren, the palettes muted and the occasional figures that appeared were enigmatic, poignant and sentimental. The death of Andrew's father was the cause of this shifting. The grief caused Andrew to focus intensely and paint with deep emotion going forward to the late 1940s.




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