BOSTON, MASS. - A woman of breeding, daring, artistic genius and fierce independence, Mary Cassatt practically willed herself to become America's greatest woman artist. Her single-minded devotion to her profession and her significant achievements elevated the position of female artists to a level never before attained.

Born into a wealthy, conventional American family, Cassatt (1844-1926) was a creative powerhouse, choosing a career as a full-time artist, living alone abroad and participating in the artistic life of fin-de-siecle Paris. While studying the work of painters whose work she admired, she evolved her own style, and developed an artist's eye and a nose for business.

An expatriate who retained her identity as an American, she longed for recognition in her homeland and became an important tastemaker for collectors in the United States. Cassatt was the only American, and one of only three women, to exhibit with the Impressionists in France. She became close friends with several of them, especially Edgar Degas, but charting her own course after the group disbanded.

Acclaimed in her lifetime and, to this day, as a painter of mothers and children, Cassatt approached this subject with the same unsentimental but sympathetic clarity she used to address all her themes. "Mary Cassatt has charm," French painter Paul Gauguin observed, "but she also has force."

The accuracy of that observation is showcased in "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman." The artist's first retrospective in thirty years brings together 100 paintings, pastels, drawings and prints in a compelling display of diverse, individualistic talent.

Curated by Judith A. Barter, Field-McCormick Curator of American Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition was organized in part by the Art Institute, where it was seen through January 10. Collaborators included the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the show is on view through May 9, and the National Gallery of Art. "Mary Cassatt" will be seen at the last venue from June 6 to September 6. The primary sponsor is the Sara Lee Foundation, with support also provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

The exhibition catalogue, put together by Barter, has lavish illustrations and essays by Cassatt authorities. Co-published by the Art Institute and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., its 376 pages include 300 illustrations (124 in color and 176 in duo-tone). It sells for $65 hardcover and $29.95 softcover.

Enlightened Beginning

Cassatt was born in what is now Pittsburgh and raised in Philadelphia in a family that valued education and viewed travel as a means to encourage learning. As a result, before she was ten, Cassatt had made the Grand Tour of the great cities of Europe.

In spite of the reservations of her parents, she enrolled at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, determined to make a career as an artist. Cassatt's decision to seek a vocation at all was unsettling to the affluent parents of a daughter in mid-Nineteenth Century America. Her choice of becoming a professional artist, a male province at that time, must have seemed beyond the pale. But she persevered in her pursuit of her goals, working zealously to learn and hone her skills.

Determined not to be a dilettante, Cassatt undertook a rigorous course of self-education after the Pennsylvania Academy, seeking to develop her own unique, powerful style. In 1865 she left America to study and copy works of the Old Masters in Europe.

She spent time in Paris, Rome, Parma, Madrid and Seville studying and copying. The paintings of her own that she created during this period - women flirting, tossing flowers and conversing with dashing bullfighters - suggest a young artist eager to combine techniques of the Old Masters with adventurous themes of modern life.

Whether depicting a mantilla-wearing, fan-holding coquette or a romantic encounter, as in "Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter" (1877-73), Cassatt's Spanish pictures reflect a sensuality and attraction to the lure of a foreign culture not usually associated with her work. The loose brush strokes and somber palette of these accomplished canvases indicate her great admiration for Spaniard Diego Velazquez's bravura technique.

If the seeds of Cassatt's ambition to be a painter of modern life were planted in Spain, they blossomed after she settled permanently in Paris, the world's art capital, in 1874. She was 30 years old.

Degas Dancers

Her first exposure to the radical work of the Impressionists came later that year when she saw a pastel of ballet dancers by Degas in a Paris gallery window. "I saw art as I wanted to see it," she recalled. "I began to live."

Before long, Degas observed and admired Cassatt's entry in the annual Paris Salon exhibition and invited her to join the Impressionists. She promptly accepted. The timing was fortuitous. The young American was eager to turn her back on the academic traditions of the Salon and strike out in new directions.

Cassatt's work appeared in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886. Along the way she became good friends with Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot, as well as Degas. Continuing her portrayals of modern females, her first appearance with the Impressionists featured young women making their own debuts, as it were, amidst the glittering opera and theater scene of the day.

In works showing women in both settings, such as "In the Loge (At the Francais - A Sketch)" (1877-78), the central figure peers through her opera glasses at the spectacle around her, while others gaze at her from adjoining boxes. The lacquer-like black employed by Cassatt here suggests the influence of Edouard Manet.

In "At the Theater' (1879-80), Cassatt's only known lithograph, she again focused on the loge theme. Its solidity and structure suggest the influence of the graphic work of Degas and Manet.

Degas, a notoriously difficult person to get along with, became Cassatt's mentor, chief artistic influence and friend. They weathered a stormy 40-year companionship bound by mutual respect for each other's art, lofty aesthetic standards and disdain for the art establishment.

A New View

Cassatt, like Degas, was never fully committed to the Impressionist dissolution of form. No matter how freely she used her brush, she never let it take command, never let it obscure the figure being depicted. Both artists were interested in recording scenes of contemporary life with the apparent spontaneity of a snapshot, and both viewed their subjects with artistic detachment. Eventually, they shared an interest in the strong lines, flattened patterns, cropped forms, unconventional perspectives and symmetrical compositions of Japanese prints. Degas taught Cassatt, art historian Adelyn D. Breeskin once observed, "a love of form and an abhorrence of useless detail."

Degas executed several interesting etchings of Cassatt, as well as a perceptive oil painting showing her wearing a tan hat and brown dress, leaning forward in her chair and holding a group of small photographs spread out like the fans in her loge pictures.

Her own self-portrait, also on view in the exhibition, was created a few years later. This quick watercolor sketch faithfully records her direct look, determined visage and proper bearing.

We begin to sense Cassatt hitting her stride in the third gallery, which features Impressionistic scenes of dignified, purposeful women who were often members of her own family. Her mother served as model for "Portrait of a Lady" (1878), in which the parent is shown reading the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro, as she did regularly in real life.

In "On the Balcony" (1878-79), a relaxed, comely young woman also reads a newspaper, her head attractively framed by peonies from the garden in which she sits. Painted with broad, fluid brush strokes, these figures are almost monumentally conceived, while each sitter's deep concentration gives their pictures great psychological intensity. Unsentimentalized renderings of intimate activities of daily life became a hallmark of Cassatt's work.

Unexpected Poses

She excelled at capturing subjects in awkward or unexpected poses, which offered challenging spatial perspectives. In "Portrait of a Little Girl" (1878) Cassatt depicted a child slumped in an overstuffed chair in an unusual composition. The painter was enraged when this masterful work was rejected by the jury for the 1878 Paris Exposition universelle. Today, "Portrait of a Little Girl" is a favorite of visitors to the National Gallery of Art.

Around this time, Cassatt created one of her few depictions of a man and boy together, "Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son Robert Kelso Cassatt" (1884-85), an affectionate study of the bonding of her brother and his son. Showing them seated together in an armchair, the solid, continuous expanse of black clothing joins the two as a single unit which, along with their psychological rapport, underscores their close relationship. Although their stiff poses eliminate the sense of tender protection that infuses the artist's maternal pictures, Cassatt clearly was drawn to the image of the loving father and affectionate son.

Mary Cassatt, who never married in deference to the demands of her career, doted on her nieces and nephews and offspring of friends. She relished depicting the innocence and beauty of children and the nurturing, tender ties between mothers and infants. It was a theme to which she brought special insight and empathy.

The exhibition organizers argue that these works reflect a surprisingly modern outlook, showing Cassatt's sensitivity to changing notions of child rearing, including the movement to promote maternal breastfeeding and to involve mothers in bathing and exercising their infants. The painter's careful but progressive attitude toward these issues is suggested by her depictions of the emotional and physical involvement of women and children, and her private comments.

In a typically tranquil canvas, "Mother and Child" (1889), a mother tenderly embraces her offspring while the child reaches up to caress the mother's chin. While realistic and drawn from life, the painting's flattened perspective and decorative patterning impart a hint of abstraction, helping the two figures to transcend their specific identities to embody universal ideals of bonding between mothers and infants.

Oriental Influences

Cassatt had already shown an awareness of Oriental art in earlier compositions, and woodcuts had been around Paris since the 1860s, but her interest in such work was heightened by repeated visits to a large exhibition of Japanese graphic art in Paris in 1890. She was particularly drawn to the idealized images of women by printmaker Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806).

This renewed exposure to the Japanese aesthetic inspired Cassatt to execute a suite of ten delicately colored drypoints and aquatints, included in the current exhibition, which represents a landmark in the history of printmaking. In this memorable group she imbued simple, domestic western themes, especially the daily cycle of women's lives in the late Nineteenth Century, with the color and decorative flair of Japanese woodblock prints.

In "The Letter" (1890-91), for example, she immortalized the humble, everyday ritual of upper-class women everywhere of writing and sealing a letter. The striking simplicity of these color prints masks the technical complexity required to create them.

Japanese graphic work also influenced Cassatt's oil paintings, such as "The Child's Bath" (1893). Here, the simple, emphatic lines, multicolored patterns and high horizon line seem especially indebted to Utamaro's example.

This image also drew inspiration from Degas's depictions of women at their toilettes, but whereas the Frenchman's scenes seem observed from a voyeur's keyhole perspective, "The Child's Bath" and other Cassatt pictures are infused with a wholesome domesticity, as though seen from the vantage point of a family member.

In the early 1890s, Cassatt was asked to paint a huge mural for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The request came from the artist's good friend, Mrs Potter Palmer, a Chicago socialite and collector. It was a somewhat controversial choice, since Cassatt was so little known in this country and had never done a mural.

The completed, three-part painting, "Modern Woman," was 58 feet long and depicted young women plucking the fruits of knowledge and science, participating in music and dance and pursuing fame. Unfortunately, this important work has since disappeared.

The Chicago mural was preceded and followed by several oils on similar themes, such as "Young Woman Picking Fruit" (1891-92), which reflected Cassatt's accelerating move toward simpler, more decorative compositions and relief-like depictions of form.

The monumental-scale figures in "Modern Woman" probably influenced her largest oil canvas, the familiar "The Boating Party" (1894), a highlight of the exhibition. It reflects the influence of Japanese prints, as well, and pays homage to Manet's celebrated "In the Boat" (1879) that she greatly admired.

Powerful Patrons

Throughout the 1890s Cassatt continued to explore the theme of mothers and babies, as exemplified by "Mother and Child" (1898). Cassatt's Paris dealer, Paul Druand-Ruel, wrote the H.O. Havemeyers - American friends and major collectors of her paintings - that "Degas considers it the finest work Mary Cassatt ever did; he says it contains all her qualities and is particularly characteristic of her talent." The Havemeyers soon acquired "Mother and Child" for the unusually high price of $2,000. It is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cassatt may well be the most distinguished mother-and-child painter of all time. At any rate, because she has few peers in the field she is primarily linked to it. In reality, she portrayed just as many older children alone and even more young women in the course of her career. Cassatt painted the world she knew. These were logical subjects that appealed to her, both aesthetically and psychologically.

In spite of her expatriate existence, Cassatt insisted that "I am an American...clearly and frankly American." She visited her native country to see family and encourage interest in her art, promoted the development of art schools in the United States, and was saddened by the lack of enthusiasm for her work in her homeland. Only in the latter part of this century has her oeuvre achieved iconic status in this country.

Cassatt played a fascinating role in shaping American tastes in art by advising several prominent collectors to acquire Old Master and Impressionist paintings. As she had hoped, many of these collections ended up in American museums, notably the Frank Macomber and Sarah Sears troves at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mrs Palmer's holdings at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Havemeyer works at the Metropolitan Museum.

Passionately committed to her profession, Cassatt worked in oils and pastels in her studio from dawn to dusk, and devoted her evenings to graphic projects. Fortunately, her physique was as rugged as her will was strong.

Her dedication makes all the more poignant her final decades when she suffered a breakdown and her eyesight failed to the point that she had to stop painting in 1914. Bitter and increasingly blind, she lived out her final years in France in virtual isolation. Cassatt became more and more hostile to Twentieth Century art innovations, which was ironic since no woman painter of her era played a more prominent role in shaping those developments.

Today, Mary Cassatt is admired for the discipline and tenacity with which she pursued her goals. As the current exhibition documents, she is deservedly venerated for the breadth, quality and enduring appeal of the beautiful body of work she bequeathed to posterity. It will be a long time before a comparable assemblage of her masterpieces will be seen in an American museum.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is at 465 Huntington Avenue, telephone 617/267-9300.