Directions: Read the story. Unscramble the words below and enter them in the boxes. Click the button to check your work.
Mary Cassatt was born in Pennsylvania in 1844. She was the fourth child of
the five children born to the family. Her family traveled a lot and she had
visited many countries by the time she was 10 years old. In those days, women
did not have professions, and there were very few women artists. Her family
did not approve when she decided that she would become an artist. She studied
first in Philadelphia and then went to Paris to study painting. She admired
the work of Edgar Degas, and was able to meet him. Her family thought she
should not be living in Paris alone, so in 1874 her sister, Lydia, came to
live with her. Lydia was her best friend and sat and posed for many of Mary's
paintings. Three years later her parents came to Paris to also live with them.
Lydia became very ill and died from a disease. Mary missed her very much. Her
parents became elderly and she cared for them, but she still found time to
paint. Though she never had children of her own, she loved children and
painted portraits of the children of her friends and family. Usually the
mother/child pictures were not of an actual mother with her child. She would
pick the models she wanted to use for the painting and ordinarily it was not
the mother's own child who was pictured with her in the painting. She became
known as the painter of mothers and children. She lost her sight due to
cataracts on her eyes in 1914 and was not able to paint during the later years
of her life.