When I teach about the Impressionists I always make sure to include Mary Cassatt, for multiple reasons really. Not only was she a wonderful artists, who could certainly hold her own during a time of mostly male artists, but her portraits of mother and child appeal to many children; my students looked at The Child's Bath and commented how it was just like them and their mom.
materials:
tempera paint
paint brushes
white paper/canvas or print out
pencil
map of North America
get to work:
1. Let's begin, as always, by showing the children a map of North America and recapping where we've been (remember our last stop was Europe with Monet?) and explaining that while many Impressionists were from Europe, Mary Cassatt was born in the United States. You can find a little background on Cassatt for you found here.
2. What I like to focus on with Cassatt are her portraits. I explain to my students that much like, Monet, Cassatt painted in Impressionist style. She was known for her portraits, she often liked to paint portraits of her sister Lydia and her family members. Many of her paintings contain a mother and child doing something ordinary and everyday, like bathing.
3. Let's get started - I give my students two options, 1. they can choose to paint a portrait in Impressionist style of one of their friends or 2. they can paint the print out of a Cassatt painting.
PS
I traced Cassatt's The Child's Bath and you can print it out here, if you'd care to use it.
I traced Cassatt's The Child's Bath and you can print it out here, if you'd care to use it.
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