Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism

About This Event

This show traces Mary Cassatt's career after 1886, the year of the eighth and final group show the Impressionists ever staged together — the point where most retrospectives stop, and this one actually starts.

Cassatt was born in Pennsylvania in 1844, trained briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, then left for Europe to study on her own terms. In 1877, Edgar Degas personally invited her to join the Impressionists' exhibitions, making her the only American and just the second woman ever formally accepted into the group — Degas reportedly admired her drawing above almost anyone else's, and the two became close friends and mutual influences. She spent most of the rest of her life in France, refused every prize and academy affiliation offered to her, and kept painting — her mother-and-child domestic scenes are what she's best remembered for — even after diabetes cost her most of her eyesight late in life.

Worth knowing: tickets run $32 for non-Illinois residents, $20 for residents, free for members — and no single showtime applies since it's a regular museum exhibit running museum hours across nearly four months.