Mary Cassatt. Being Independent is on view at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France, from 6 October 2026 to 31 January 2027. Organised to mark the centenary of Cassatt’s death, it is the first major exhibition dedicated to her by the French national museums and aims to restore her central position within late 19th- and early 20th-century art on both sides of the Atlantic.

Cassatt was an active member of the Impressionist group, but her career followed a particularly independent path. An American working in Paris, she built a body of work around women’s lives, intimacy and modern social experience while also developing an important practice as a printmaker. Her paintings and prints often use compressed viewpoints, unusual cropping and carefully controlled compositions to make private scenes feel formally radical rather than merely sentimental.

The exhibition’s key contribution is exactly that shift in perspective: Cassatt is presented not as a secondary Impressionist, but as an artist who forged a distinct identity through talent, determination and a genuinely transatlantic career.

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was an American painter and printmaker who settled in France and became one of the core members of the Impressionist group. Her work is especially important for its intelligent representation of women, domestic life and modern experience, as well as for her experiments in printmaking.