The life of artist Mary Cassatt will be portrayed in a one-woman performance by actress Robin Lane on Sunday, October 24, at 2 pm, at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts. The program is free with the price of admission to the museum.

Cassatt was the only American painter to be accepted into the French Impressionist group that included Degas, Pissarro, Monet and Renoir. Her father's reaction to her desire to pursue a career as an artist was to declare, “I would almost rather see you dead.” Nevertheless, by the time she was 21, Cassatt had settled in Paris to study art. Denied entry into formal art classes, she copied masterpieces in the Louvre, saying later that “the instruction of the museum was sufficient.”

Boston actress Robin Lane has presented performances from her series Artful Lives: Living Portraits of Women Artists at museums throughout the country.

The Springfield Museums’ adult program series is sponsored by The Republican.

Future programs in the series are:
Nov. 7 – The Puritan, Striding through Springfield, by Joyce K. Schiller
Nov. 14 – Freedom Summer, by Bruce Watson
Nov. 17 – Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, by Heather Cox-Richardson.