(1844-1926)

Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh, she was the daughter of a well-do-to businessman. Cassatt grew up in an environment that valued education. Her parents believed travel was a way to learn, and before she was 10 years old, she visited many of the capitals of Europe, including London, Paris, and Berlin. Despite her family's objections to her becoming a professional artist, she began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA (1861-1865). Tired of patronizing instructors and fellow male students, and the slow pace of her courses, she decided to study the old masters on her own and in 1866 she moved to Paris.

Returning to the United States at the outset of the Franco-Prussian War, she lived with her family, but art supplies and models were difficult to find in the small town. Her father continued to resist her vocation, and paid only for her basic needs but not her art supplies. She returned to Europe in 1871 when the archbishop of Pittsburgh commissioned her to paint copies of paintings in Italy, after which she traveled about Europe.

By 1872, after studying in the major European museums, her style matured, and in Paris, she studied with Camille Pissarro. The jury accepted her first painting for the Paris Salon in 1872. The Salon critics claimed that her colors were too bright and that her portraits too accurate to be flattering to the subject.

Upon seeing pastels by Edgar Degas in an art dealer's window, though, she knew she was not alone in her rebellion against the Salon. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it."