Mary Cassatt Gave Women a Place in the Impressionist Movement

Mary Cassatt reshaped the art world by elevating everyday domestic moments into beautiful Impressionist works of art. Discover how she championed the visibility of women as both subject and artist and helped bring Impressionism to American museums.

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was an American painter and printmaker renowned for her intimate portrayals of women and children in a domestic setting. Born in Pennsylvania, she spent much of her adult life in France, where she became closely associated with the Impressionist movement. Cassatt was one of only three women—and the only American—to exhibit with the French Impressionists, earning praise for her innovative use of color, light, and composition.

Influenced by artists like Edgar Degas and Japanese printmaking, she developed a distinctive style using pastel colors, loose brushwork, and thoughtful composition. Cassatt used her art to advocate for women’s visibility in both society and the arts. Later in life, she supported women’s suffrage and encouraged American collectors to buy Impressionist works, shaping the art collections of major U.S. museums, including the Smithsonian. Her legacy endures as a pioneering figure who expanded the possibilities for women in art.

Painter of Maternity

In 1904, Mary Cassatt’s oil painting, The Caress, won prizes in two prestigious shows of contemporary American art. For the accomplished sixty-year-old, such public acclaim was overdue. Yet Cassatt politely refused to accept them. “No jury, no medals, no awards,” she wrote, expressing a desire for self-determination that defined both her career and her artistic style.

Although Cassatt’s parents discouraged her early art studies, their wealth facilitated her training in Philadelphia and Europe. Cassatt settled in Paris in 1874 and soon began exhibiting with Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and other Impressionist painters. For her pictures of women and children, she usually hired models, creating modern-day Madonna-and-child motifs, but the “painter of maternity” remained unmarried and childless.

Success allowed Cassatt to reject prizes and reproach her elite patrons for giving insufficient support to emerging artists, especially women. Nonetheless, she respected the public role of museums, and when The Caress entered the Smithsonian’s collection, she sent its donor, William T. Evans, a personal letter of thanks.

Mary Cassatt’s focus on the domestic sphere, long dismissed as a “less serious” subject, gained critical legitimacy through her technical skill and formal innovation. She portrayed these intimate scenes as worthy artistic subjects through structured composition and bold color, offering a visible counterpoint to the art scene dominated by men. By advocating for the inclusion of Impressionist work in major U.S. art museums, she helped redefine the value of women’s perspectives as both subject and artist, ensuring they would be seen, studied, and remembered.

You can view more of Mary Cassatt’s drawings online at the Library of Congress.

An earlier version of this article was originally published in Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity, and Vision from the National Collection.

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