Lydia Cassatt
Mary’s older sister, sidekick, and subject
I’m the author of The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art (October 2025). Escape into Art is a place you’ll find paintings and miscellanea about American Impressionist Mary Cassatt and her circle of artist friends, along with delicious bites from Paris during La Belle Époque, the Beautiful Age.
Everyone needs a sidekick. Mary Cassatt’s showed up at just the right time. Lydia Cassatt, Mary’s older sister by seven years, came to Paris with her parents to share a Montmartre apartment with Mary in 1877. Mary had been studying and working in Paris (and other parts of Europe) since 1865, minus the two years she went home to Pennsylvania during the Franco-Prussian War.
The timing of Lydia Cassatt’s arrival could not have been more fortuitous, because the same year she arrived, Edgar Degas invited Mary to join the Impressionist collective.
Though Mary Cassatt is most associated with her portraits of mothers and children, during her years with the Impressionists (1877 to 1886), Lydia is a recurring subject in Mary’s paintings, pastels, and prints. Mary featured her in a series of opera paintings at her first Impressionist exhibit on April 10, 1879. Mary continued to paint Lydia in domestic scenes and gardens in the years that followed.
Like Mary, Lydia Cassatt never married. She lost her fiancé in the Civil War and was free to move with her parents (upon her father’s retirement) to live with Mary in France at the age of forty.
During her sister’s years with the Impressionists, Lydia was Mary’s constant companion. She frequented social gatherings and became friends with artists, musicians, and writers of the time. By moving to Paris in the late 1870s, Lydia Cassatt had a front-row seat to the personalities, parties, and groundbreaking artwork of les avant-gardes. She also played a starring role in the early artwork of her sister.
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The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art will be published in early October. Until then, I’ll feature Impressionist paintings and historical facts about the novel’s settings, characters, and time. Next week, I’ll talk about the Louvre and its central role in Mary Cassatt’s life.
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Until The Cassatt Sisters is published, I’ll keep a flame burning here—like an old gas lamp on the rue Laffitte, the charming cobblestone street that was once the center of Parisian art. Merci for coming along!