This study redefines the American artist Mary Cassatts status in the Parisian avant-garde & in American art placing her work in the wider context of 19th-century feminism & art theory. Cassatts art explores a new womans" perspective on the spaces of modernity: at the theatre in the drawing-room & garden in the studio. Admired by Degas
- who invited her to show with the Impressionists in 1877
- Cassatts work reveals her profound study of old masters & keen responses to contemporary French & Spanish painters. Pollock emphasizes Cassatts interest in Manet & her influence on American collections of French modernism. She also argues that Cassatts experimentation with etching & pastel from the late 1880s enabled her to represent children & women without sentiment but with a deepening awareness of a complex psychological charge."