Mary CASSATT

American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) achieved a unique status in the 19th-century French art world, dominated by men. Her 40-year friendship with Edgar Degas was formative and crucial to her early career. He persuaded her to stop striving for the status quo acceptance of the Paris Salon and instead exhibit with the Impressionists. The strong graphic quality and negative space of her printmaking practice reflect the prevalent Japanese influence of that time. Her tender depictions of mothers and children have made her work perennially popular. In her last days, as her eyesight failed, she was a champion for women's suffrage.