Mary Cassatt

American Impressionist who lived in Paris and painted the intimate bond between mothers and children. Cassatt fought her family for permission to study art, traveled alone in Europe in her twenties, and was eventually invited by Degas to exhibit with the Impressionists — the only American to do so during the movement's lifetime. A landmark exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris in 1890 transformed her work, pushing her toward flatter color, bold contour and the asymmetric compositions of her best-known mother-and-child series. She also used her American social network to place Impressionist canvases in U.S. collections, almost single-handedly seeding the great holdings of Impressionism that now anchor American museums.