Cassatt likely executed this work as she prepared for the impressionists’ fourth group show in Paris in 1879. At the time, she and the artist Edgar Degas were experimenting together with distemper, a challenging medium that gives paintings a matte surface finish. Cassatt abandoned distemper after 1879, making this one of only two known paintings that she created with this technique.

Cassatt and Degas were friends, peers, and competitors, and Woman Standing exemplifies how they exchanged ideas, techniques, and motifs. When Degas encouraged his fellow impressionists to make handpainted fans, a popular fashion accessory, Cassatt incorporated fans into her paintings, giving them luster with touches of metallic paint. But she chose not to decorate actual fans. Her decision may have stemmed from the negative connotations of fan making, which, when practiced by women, was treated as an amateur craft rather than a fine art.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).