(1844-1926) US Impressionist painter and printmaker. She settled in Paris 1868. Her popular, colorful pictures of mothers and children show the influence of Japanese prints, for example The Bath 1892 (Art Institute, Chicago). She excelled in etching and pastel. .. CTXT: Cassatt was the daughter of a Pennsylvania banker. Her childhood was spent in France, and after some training at the Philadelphia
Academy and a period of travel about Europe, when she studied the old masters, she settled in Paris, 1874, and became an adherent of the Impressionists. She contributed to the Impressionist exhibitions of 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886, her work being much admired by Degas, who encouraged her efforts. From 1912 she suffered from a partial but increasing blindness. Her delicate studies of women and children relate her work to that of Berthe Morisot, though she was not so free and adventurous in style as her French contemporary. She did much to arouse interest in Impressionist painting in America.
Cassatt's work, always respected in France, has gained recognition in the US in recent years; the largest collection is owned the Philadelphia Art Museum.