After her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Mary Cassatt traveled to Europe in 1866 to complete her artistic training. She traveled widely—including a visit to Seville, Spain, where she painted this work—before settling in Paris in 1874. A Balcony in Seville illustrates Cassatt’s practice of modernizing traditional motifs, an approach that aligned her with the French Impressionists, with whom she exhibited beginning in 1879.
Mary Cassatt’s (American, 1844–1926) paintings, pastels, and prints demonstrate her personal philosophy that “women should be someone and not something.” In domestic scenes, Cassatt explores the lives and occupations of women, showing them as active and engaged figures. She depicts women reading, caregivers bathing children, and ladies enjoying tea, sealing a letter, or driving a carriage.
Born in Pennsylvania, Cassatt was the only American to join the French Impressionists. Although she spent most of her life abroad, her family’s connections to Philadelphia have made the museum, which holds eighty-three artworks and numerous letters by Cassatt, an important center for her work.
Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art
