Cassatt painted this self-portrait, one of only two known, a year after Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists. His influence is reflected in the unusual sage-green background, the attention to contrasting complementary colors, and the figure's daring asymmetrical pose and indifference to the viewer. Louisine Elder (later Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer), a young American Cassatt met in Paris in 1874, acquired this self-portrait from the artist by 1879 and lent it to the thirteenth annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in New York in February 1880.

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