In 1860, Mary who was now sixteen, enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In spite of the fact that women, especially those of the upper class, were discouraged from pursuing careers, she wanted to be a professional artist. By 1862, however, she had grown frustrated with the program's slow pace and insufficient course offerings. She also resented the condescending attitude of the male teachers and most of her fellow students. She concluded that the best way for her to learn about art would be to go to Europe and study the works

Overcoming the strong objections of her family (her father once declared he would rather see his daughter dead than living abroad as a "bohemian". Mary Cassatt left for Paris in 1866 to take private art lessons and copy masterpieces in the Louvre. Over the next few years, she traveled throughout France and stayed briefly in Rome. Her first break came in 1868, when one of her portraits was accepted at the prestigious Paris Salon, which was an exhibition run by the French government's Academy of Fine Arts. She changed her name to ‘’Mary Stevenson’’, to protect her family from the embarrassment. Her debut effort was successfully received, as was another portrait she submitted in 1870.

Unlike many of the other Impressionists, who favored landscapes and street scenes, Cassatt became famous for her appealing portraits, primarily of women in casual domestic surroundings. Nearly one-third of her work-depicted mothers with their children. Like her technique, her treatment of this rather conventional subject matter was refreshingly different; as a Newsweek writer observed, her mothers and children are not depicted as the Madonna’s and angels of the Renaissance or the adoring couples of predictable portraiture.

The 1890s became Cassatt's busiest and most creative period and marked her emergence as a role model for young American artists who came to Europe seeking her advice about their studies. As the new century began Cassatt shifted emphasis from her own work to that of others. She had long championed her fellow Impressionists and rarely missed the chance to encourage wealthy Americans to support the fledgling movement by purchasing artwork. Now she tackled the role in earnest, serving as an advisor to several major collectors. Cassatt's only stipulation was that whatever they purchased would eventually be passed along to American art museums.

Recently after the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870, Cassatt unenthusiastically returned home and directly encountered obstacles that threatened to put an end to her career. Living with her parents in a small town right outside Philadelphia, she began having conflicts with finding people that would be willing to model for her. To make matters worse, her father announced that he would provide for her basic needs, but not for anything connected with her work. In an attempt to raise some money, she left some of her paintings with an art dealer in New York, but he was unable to interest any buyers. She then took them to a dealer in Chicago, where they were all destroyed in the catastrophic fire of 1871.

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