Female Visual Angel Of Mary Cassatt's Painting

This thesis focuses on researching the paintings of Mary Cassatt, a female Impressionist at the end of 19th Century. With introducing the social background in that period, comparing her most representative art works with other painters' pieces which share the same theme of mother-child, bathing and theatre, I try to analyze the features of her art works, and to explain social reasons and its significance of unique female perspective of her paintings.The research method is iconography. I compared Cassatt's art works with Morrisot's mother-child paintings, Degas's bathing paintings, and Renoir's theater paintings, to point out the inner meaning of paintings in different themes. Her mother-child art works show the maternal feeling of a single and non-fertility lady, her bathing art works explore woman's self-love, and her theatre art works express the woman's self-respect. Her whole art presents her noble character of self-esteem, self-love and self-improvement. Cassatt is the most outstanding female Impressionist, and her works reflect bourgeois women's living status in metropolis at that age. Her success is helpful to enlighten other artists, especially female artists in the future.