Cassatt history

Cassatt moved her residence to Paris in 1874, where she shared an apartment with her sister Lydia; their parents joined them three years later.

Her cynicism grew when one of the two pictures she submitted in 1875 was refused by the jury, only to be accepted the following year after she darkened the background.

In 1877, however, both her paintings were rejected, and for the first time in several years she had no works in the Salon.

When Cassatt exhibited In the Loge in Boston in 1878, one critic praised it by writing that Cassatt's work "surpassed the strength of most men."

When Edgar Degas invited her to join the group of independent artist, known as Impressionists, in 1879, she was delighted.

Her final exhibition with the Impressionists was in 1886, and she subsequently stopped identifying herself with a particular movement or school.

After the great exhibition of Japanese prints held in Paris in 1890, she brought out her series of 10 coloured prints—e.g., Woman Bathing and The Coiffure—in which the influence of the Japanese masters Utamaro and Toyokuni is apparent.

Her first solo print exhibition occurred in 1891, with a series of highly original colored prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, inspired by the Japanese masters shown in Paris the year before.

In her piece The Child’s Bath, from 1893, an intimately observed vignette of a woman bathing her child, Mary combines certain stylistic influences of Japanese art with the subject matter of her own milieu.

In 1915, she helped to organize a New York exhibition consisting of works by old masters, her friend Degas and eighteen of her own works, in order to raise funds to support the cause.

By 1919, the firm had offices in Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

In 1931, the firm split its investment banking business from its traditional brokerage business.

In 1934, Cassatt began discussions with E.A. Pierce & Co., the largest brokerage firm in the United States at the time about a potential merger.

In 1935, these discussions resulted in a partnership between the two firms.

Following the death of Edmund C. Lynch in 1938, Winthrop Smith began discussions with Charles E. Merrill, who owned a minority interest in E.A. Pierce about a possible merger of the two firms.