B. 1845-1926 - Mary Cassatt: Initially, Mary Cassatt was a figure painter whose subjects were groups of women drinking tea or on outings with friends. After the great exhibition of Japanese prints held in Paris in 1890, she exhibited her series of 10 coloured prints with bolder expressions, "Woman Bathing" and "The Coiffure" in which the influence of the Japanese masters Utamaro and Toyokuni is apparent. In these etchings, combining aquatint, dry point, and soft ground, Mary Cassatt brought her printmaking technique to perfection. Cassatts' emphasis shifted from form to line and pattern. Soon after 1900 her eyesight began to fail, and by 1914 she had ceased working. The principal motif of her mature and perhaps most familiar period is mothers caring for small children,"The Bath"(La Toilette, c. 1892; Art Institute of Chicago).