Before she entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studied abroad, her father took her on a Grand Tour of Europe.

[5] John Sartain taught his daughter art,[2] including the mezzotint engraving technique[5] that he revived, which was a favored process in England that created high-quality prints of paintings.

[3] He mortgaged his house[5] and gave her a "gentleman's education" in fine art by taking her on a Grand Tour of Europe beginning the summer of 1862.

She enjoyed the English countryside; old world cities, especially Florence and Edinburgh; the Louvre; Italian Renaissance paintings; and artists like Dante and engraver Elena Perfetti.

[4] In 1870, Sartain met Mary Cassatt in Philadelphia and the following year they left for Paris, London, Parma, and Turin to study painting.

[18] The women spent the first winter in Italy[10] and studied printmaking with Carlo Raimondi, who taught engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma.

[2][4][24] Among her works were period scenes that depicted submissive women with downcast eyes as in Italian Woman and The Reproof.

[25] Sartain exhibited her works in cities along the East Coast of the United States[13] and was the only woman to win a gold medal at the 1876 World Fair in Philadelphia[4] for The Reproof.

[2] She won the Mary Smith Prize for best picture by a woman at the 1881 and 1883 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibits.

[26] Sartain exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and at the Pennsylvania Building of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

Hattie is believed to have helped her attain the commissions of portraits of local physicians Constantin Hering and James Caleb Jackson.

[12][b] In 1886 she became the director of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women,[4] in which her father had served on the board as vice president for years.

[20] She was responsible for introducing important faculty members such as Robert Henri, Samuel Murray and Daniel Garber to the school.

[31] In 1897, Emily Sartain and Alice Barber Stephens, a teacher at the school, founded The Plastic Club in Philadelphia.

[2] Nina de Angeli Walls wrote, As Sartain's career illustrates, art schools conferred professional status in a cultural field once dominated by men.