In her opinion, “there was no education” at the Pennsylvania Academy. Indeed, in mid-nineteenth-century America, opportunities for artistic education were limited. In 1899, R. Mutter, one of the most renowned art historians of the nineteenth century, wrote that “until the United States declared independence (in 1776), America had neither painting nor sculpture. People ate and drank, built houses and reproduced. A piece of iron had more value than the best of statues, a yard of good fabric was preferred to Raphael’s Transfiguration.”
Woman Reading
1878
Oil on canvas, 78.7 × 58.9 cm
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
In the United States, it was impossible to get acquainted with the paintings of old European masters since there were no collections there yet. Some of the settlers brought family portraits with them from Europe, but nothing more. “Moreover,” continues Mutter, “Quakers denounced art, considering it worldly vanity. Only with time, when the dollar grew strong, did enterprising European portrait artists, who did not find luck at home, begin to appear in America.
In the Loge, at the Opera
1878
Oil on canvas, 81.2 × 66 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
They crossed the ocean to grace the New World with their dubious works of art. “ Young Americans were keenly aware that America was lagging behind the millennia-old European artistic tradition. Historians analysing the development of American art admit that in the nineteenth century it lacked the most important component: the classical background, the roots without which the most avant-garde artistic movements would never have developed. In 1864, art critic James Jackson Jarves wrote in the journal The Art Idea that at that moment America had “no state collections to guide a growing taste; no caste of persons of whom fashion demands encouragement to art growth; no ancestral homes, replete with storied portraiture of the past; no legendary lore more dignified than forest or savage life.” With the booming development of American industry, only technical professions were in demand, and a technical elite began to form in big cities. Painting and drawing played merely a practical role in the new civilisation since they were used mainly for design. The times when collecting art would become not only a passion for wealthy Americans, but also a cultural need for the country, had not yet arrived.
Woman Standing, Holding a Fan
1878–79
Distemper with metallic paint on canvas, 128.6 × 72 cm
Private Collection
Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge
1879
Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 59.7 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
This weakness of American culture gradually became more and more evident. The question of how to make up for this absence arose. “We buy, borrow, adopt and adapt,” wrote Jarves, “For some time to come, Europe must do for us all what we are in too much of a hurry to do ourselves. It remains, then, for us to be as eclectic in our art as in the rest of our civilisations.” Dozens of young Americans – for the most part men – went to England or Germany, but, naturally, most of them preferred Paris.
On the Balcony
1878–79
Oil on canvas, 89.9 × 65.2 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
In the mid-nineteenth century, many professors at the École des Beaux-Arts, members of the jury of the Annual Paris Salon, and members of European academies, had their own “free” studios in the city. Anyone could draw and paint live models there, and, for a small fee, could receive all of the same instruction as in the studios of the École. Young Americans were mastering techniques of classical painting. They learned the fashionable lustre of James Tissot and imitated the realism of the rebellious Courbet and even the “untidy” sketching style of young artists. When Mary entered the Philadelphia Academy, she had already chosen her career, although not without some resistance on the part of her parents.
At the Theatre
1878–79
Pastel and gouache with metallic paint on tan wove paper, 64.6 × 54.5 cm
Private Collection
“A little before the war, so to speak around 1868, I decided to become a painter,” she remembered later, “at the same time I decided to go to Europe.” The choice of the European country where she would continue her studies was obvious. “Around 1868 my mother and I returned to Paris and stayed there for over a year.” First of all, Mary wanted to get to know France better. The diversity of the landscape and the country’s always unexpected beauty was stunning, even to its own artists. It is hard to determine the degree of Mary’s interest in landscape – she later showed no interest in it.
The Cup of Tea
1879
Oil on canvas, 92.4 × 65.4 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
However, at the beginning of her artistic journey she needed to master everything French art had to offer. Already in the 1830’s, there was a group of landscape painters who were devoting their lives to exalting the beauty and distinctive character of the French countryside. Having begun in the vicinity of Paris, in the famous Fontainebleau Forest, the “Barbizon” artists painted the fishing villages of Normandy, the woods and hills along the banks of the Seine, and the rocky shores of Brittany. By the time of Mary’s arrival in France, the best masters of French landscape – Theodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Diaz, Charles-François Daubigny, Camille Corot – were not only already well-known, but had also earned an important place at the Paris Salon, and some had even joined the jury.
Lydia Leaning on Her Arms Seated in a Loge
1879
Pastel, 53.3 × 43.2 cm
The Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
Future Impressionists were beginning to search for a new path precisely in this genre. It is hard to imagine that the young American was not at all interested in landscape. She travelled in France for some time and then returned to the United States. America was in the midst of the Civil War at the time. Mary spent two years
