[2] She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists.

She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of "les trois grandes dames" (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot.

[12] Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as an integral part of a well-rounded education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin.

[13] It is likely that her first exposure to French artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, and Gustave Courbet was at the Paris World's Fair of 1855.

[14] Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15.

[12] Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own.

In this manner, fellow artist and friend Elizabeth Jane Gardner met and married famed academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

[25] The French art scene was in a process of change, as radical artists such as Courbet and Édouard Manet tried to break away from accepted Academic tradition, and the Impressionists were in their formative years.

She wrote in a letter of July 1871, "I have given up my studio & torn up my father's portrait, & have not touched a brush for six weeks nor ever will again until I see some prospect of getting back to Europe.

She was blunt in her comments, as reported by Sartain, who wrote: "she is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern art, disdains the Salon pictures of Cabanel, Bonnat, all the names we are used to revere".

Out of her distress and self-criticism, Cassatt decided that she needed to move away from genre paintings and onto more fashionable subjects, in order to attract portrait commissions from American socialites abroad, but that attempt bore little fruit at first.

[35] At this low point in her career she was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety.

They tended to prefer plein air painting and the application of vibrant color in separate strokes with little pre-mixing, which allows the eye to merge the results in an "impressionistic" manner.

"[38] She accepted Degas' invitation with enthusiasm and began preparing paintings for the next Impressionist show, planned for 1878, which (after a postponement because of the World's Fair) took place on April 10, 1879.

[40] In 1877, Cassatt was joined in Paris by her father and mother, who returned with her sister Lydia, all eventually to share a large apartment on the fifth floor of 13, Avenue Trudaine, (48°52′54″N 2°20′41″E / 48.8816°N 2.3446°E / 48.8816; 2.3446).

Both were highly experimental in their use of materials, trying distemper and metallic paints in many works, such as Woman Standing Holding a Fan, 1878–79 (Amon Carter Museum of American Art).

She treasured his friendship but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature after a project they were collaborating on at the time, a proposed journal devoted to prints, was abruptly dropped by him.

Through the efforts of Gustave Caillebotte, who organized and underwrote the show, the group made a profit and sold many works, although the criticism continued as harsh as ever.

Although critics claimed that Cassatt's colors were too bright and that her portraits were too accurate to be flattering to the subjects, her work was not savaged as was Monet's, whose circumstances were the most desperate of all the Impressionists at that time.

Her friend Louisine Elder married Harry Havemeyer in 1883, and with Cassatt as advisor, the couple began collecting the Impressionists on a grand scale.

[53] Unlike the other Impressionists of the time who often painted street scenes and landscapes, Cassatt preferred to depict the everyday life of women and the domestic labors associated with the home.

[55] By choosing to depict more humble feminine environments Cassatt effectively raised scenes of women, their labor, friendships, and personal life to be celebrated as high art.

[57] The exhibition brought her into conflict with her sister-in-law Eugenie Carter Cassatt, who was anti-suffrage and who boycotted the show along with Philadelphia society in general.

In particular The Boating Party, thought to have been inspired by the birth of Eugenie's daughter Ellen Mary, was bought by the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.[58][59] Cassatt and Degas had a long period of collaboration.

[a] A Self-Portrait (c. 1880) by Cassatt depicts her in the identical hat and dress, leading art historian Griselda Pollock to speculate they were executed in a joint painting session in the early years of their acquaintance.

Degas' withdrawal piqued Cassatt who had worked hard at preparing a print, In the Opera Box, in a large edition of fifty impressions, no doubt destined for the journal.

[72] From the 1890s onwards their relationship took on a decidedly commercial aspect, as in general had Cassatt's other relations with the Impressionist circle;[71][73] nevertheless they continued to visit each other until Degas died in 1917.

[74] Cassatt's reputation is based on an extensive series of rigorously drawn and tenderly observed paintings and prints on the theme of the mother and child.

[79] In 1891, she exhibited a series of highly original colored drypoint and aquatint prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, inspired by the Japanese masters shown in Paris the year before.

[80] Also in 1891, Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer approached Cassatt to paint a 12' × 58' mural about "Modern Woman" for the Women's Building for the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in 1893.