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"She's quite well-known as an American painter during the Impressionist time," said Indianapolis Museum of Art Textiles Curator Niloo Paydar.

But if you look a little more closely, Cheap MLB hats you see a detailed rendering of the times -- and the clothes -- in which Cassatt painted.

The IMA's Fashion Arts Society and the Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art have arranged for Nancy Mowll Mathews -- a Cassatt expert and Williams College Museum of Art curator of 19th- and 20th-century art -- to lead a discussion on the ways Cassatt used the clothing in her paintings to comment on modern life and modern art.

For the IMA, the Cassatt talk is another way to engage its visitors with art; it's another lens or perspective, said Ellen Lee, the IMA Wood-Pulliam senior curator.

"Clothing is so personal, and it is so Cheap Mixed Brands Snapback Hats reflective of personality," Lee said. "It's part of our everyday life, so it's kind of irresistible. Clothing and how it's worn is another visual art. It's another aspect of aesthetics, and it can be so lively and so approachable."

To know the woman is to know her times -- and her clothing.

Raised in an affluent Pennsylvania-based family, Cassatt was already a clotheshorse by the time she moved to Paris in 1866 to study painting.

"If you look at photographs of her in her teens and 20s, she's always dressed to the nines," Mathews said.

Cassatt was a keen observer of fashion -- and she had "a real sense of her own style, which comes out in her self-portraits," said Gloria Groom, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. "For her paintings, she used understated, beautiful materials that are still in some ways very classic."

The late 19th century also Cheap NFL Hats saw dress reform, in which women adopted bloomers or, even more popularly, the Neoclassical dress -- a loose-fitting dress of light material, almost like a nightgown. The dress was adopted by many artists' wives or other bold women who eschewed the steel bones of corsetry.

"(The Neoclassical dress) is very risqué and, of course, very freeing -- but daring," Mathews said.

But Cassatt probably didn't adopt them for her daily wear. She favored highly tailored suits executed in dark colors and elegant fabrics.

"I think she would have been perfectly happy to live out her life in those styles," Mathews said.

But the painter certainly adopted the clothing for her pieces, including sketches for her "Modern Woman Murals," commissioned for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

At times, Cassatt had custom-made clothing Cheap Baseball Hats created specifically for the sitter; those paintings signify collaboration between artist and clothier, Mathews said, and helped elevate clothing to artistry by using dresses that were nothing short of an homage to the modern dressmaker.

Dress colors are used to create an ethereal feel -- silky pinks and whites project a freshness, she said.

"She has such a mastery of the subject. I can't help but look at every one of her paintings and think that she used all of those clothing and accessories with some reason."

The Impressionists made fashion a centerpiece -- large exhibits in salons encouraged fancy dress and fashionable clothes; arts patrons wanted to be seen as fashionable. While we now look to celebrities on the runways of awards shows for our inspiration, Impressionist art led fashion and showed what was of the moment.

The clothing in Cassatt's paintings Cheap Snapback hats helps us to identify the women of the generation depicted -- a generation that was figuring out what "modern" meant, Mathews said.

Artists have always been trendsetters, said Indianapolis gallery director Christopher West. Fashion is still used deliberately in contemporary art, he said.

"Two artists that first come to mind are Kehinde Wiley and Mickalene Thomas," West said. "They're both African-American artists who are kind of recontextualizing the clothing Cheap New Era 59Fifty hats in the paintings; they're looking for a particular feel or mood."

"We look at works of art for aesthetic pleasure, but they can also be mined for historical information," said the IMA's Lee. "You can read a painting for what it has to tell you about style or customs or fashion."

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