Mary Cassatt’s soft, serene portraits of mothers and children won her praise and acceptance from painters including Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro; Cassatt was the only American invited to join their Impressionist group. Her lush paintings and prints offered a rare feminine perspective in the male-dominated art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cassatt was, in fact, one of only three women who were formally associated with Impressionism—Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot were her counterparts. Cassatt developed a unique aesthetic that united the palettes of Impressionism with elements of Old Masters compositions and stylistic tenets of Japanese woodblock prints. She participated in many important exhibitions during her lifetime, including a number of salons in Paris, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the famed 1913 Armory Show. Her work has sold for seven figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.