This is Mary Cassatt herself (c1879-84, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian), painted by Edgar Degas. She described seeing Degas' work in 1874 as "a turning point in my life", and the two artists engaged in lively dialogues about the depiction of modern life and collected each other’s work. Here she may be in a photographer's studio, perhaps holding her artist's cartes de visite, and Degas "establishes her as his peer and as a successful artist in her own right".