Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt moved to Paris, refused the Salon, and joined the Impressionists at Degas’s invitation, the only American to exhibit with them. Her family thought the career unsuitable and her father reportedly said he would rather see her dead than an artist.

Mothers and children became her subject, which has been used to diminish her ever since. The pictures themselves resist that. The children squirm, the mothers look preoccupied, and the compositions are cropped and tilted in ways learned from Japanese prints.

The colour drypoint and aquatint series of 1890 and 1891 is the technical high point, ten prints made after seeing a large exhibition of Japanese woodblocks in Paris. She also advised American collectors, which is why so much Impressionist work ended up in US museums. Failing eyesight stopped her working around 1914.