Mary Cassatt - Artists’ words

‘At the Philadelphia Academy, we used to sketch as best we could from old copies or ancient plaster casts. There was no teaching. I believe, moreover, that painting cannot be taught, and that one does not need to take lessons from a master. What one learns in museums is enough. So I set off for Italy and stayed in Parma for eight months, where I enrolled at Correggio’s school. What a marvellous master! From there I went on to Spain. The Rubens in the Prado Museum filled me with such admiration that I rushed from Madrid to Antwerp. I stayed there for a whole summer to study Rubens. It was from Rome that I returned to Paris in 1874 to settle there permanently.”
Mary Cassatt.