Mary Cassatt

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's digital collection includes 15 of Cassatt's works, including several iconic watercolors, like "Portrait of the Artist" and "Mother Playing with Child." Alongside them, you can read helpful contextual information assembled by Cassatt scholar H Barbara Weinberg.

This collection from The Art Story situates Cassatt's major works chronologically and provides historical context, allowing you to see how her interactions with both the French Impressionists and Japanese printmaking influenced her work.

Although the American Impressionist's work is sometimes dismissed as overly sentimental, these Cassatt specialists argue that her portrayals of women are often subtly subversive, emphasizing how they defy the gender norms of the time.

The painter came from an affluent background but was determined to become an artist, a decision that was at odds with her father's wishes. Still, she began art school at 15, where she was one of the few female students and not permitted to paint portraits of live models. This brief documentary from The Art Tourist explains how those formative experiences taught Cassatt to challenge conventional approaches in her work.

Drs. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker note that this portrait of an intimate moment between mother and daughter might have been out of place in 1893, but that its subject matter alludes to spiritual images from the Renaissance or Baroque periods.

Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris analyze Cassatt's 1878 painting, highlighting how the perspective places viewers on the same level as the child portrayed and how this affects our impression of the little girl.

In 1890, the artist attended an exhibition in Paris featuring a vast collection of 725 Japanese woodblock prints. Inspired by the work, she told a friend she could not stop thinking about "color on copper," and eventually used a metal plate "intaglio" technique to execute her vision. This video recreates how she made it happen.

Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, Cassatt set out to create works by placing "color on copper." The result is this 1891 collection of images depicting women in their private and public lives. Below is "The Bath," one of those 10.

Although Degas was 10 years older, the two were equals, often inspiring one another to try new techniques in their painting. This Artnet article explores how that relationship came to an end for unknown reasons—some say it was due to the dissolution of their shared journal, while others speculate there was a failed romantic relationship.

The painter was one of three women to exhibit with the French artists, and the only American. Cassatt broke ground by focusing on subjects largely ignored by the male-dominated art world, such as maternity and womanhood.