Mary Cassatt grew up in an upper-middle-class household in Pennsylvania. Cassatt's training began in 1861, when she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1865 she took a four-year trip to Europe, traveling and studying in Paris, Rome, and Madrid. In 1868 her painting A Mandolin Player became Cassatt's first work to be accepted by the Paris Salon.

Edgar Degas saw Cassatt's work at the Salon, and in 1877 he asked her to join the impressionists. Having experienced a number of rejections from subsequent Salon exhibitions and other significant juried shows, Cassatt readily accepted Degas's invitation.

Cassatt's painting style and subject matter changed greatly because of her association with the impressionists. She abandoned colorful costume genre depictions in favor of scenes from contemporary life. In 1879 Degas, the etcher Félix Bracquemond, and Camille Pissarro were preparing work for a new print journal Le jour et la nuit. Cassatt's subsequent involvement in this project would influence her oeuvre by whetting her appetite for the graphic medium. The journal was never published, but the artists' efforts to experiment with graphic techniques were very important to Cassatt's development as a printmaker. The majority of these early works were soft-ground etchings with aquatint, a process that echoed Cassatt's experience as a painter. Throughout the latter half of the 1880s, Cassatt produced drypoints of members of her family, and in 1889 at the Exposition de Peintres-Graveurs at the Durand-Ruel gallery, she submitted both a drypoint and an etching.

Although an expatriate from 1874 on, Cassatt is recognized as one of the foremost American painters and printmakers of the 19th century. A prolific printmaker, she produced more than 220 prints during the course of her career. Cassatt's failing eyesight prevented her from working for the last 15 years of her life.