The misunderstanding that occurred in 1917 with the painting “Morning Toilet” (Girl Arranging Her Hair) was a pleasant event for Cassatt, because her work was mistaken for a work by Degas. In fact, the artist asked his friend to give him this canvas, which was exhibited at the eighth Impressionist exhibition. In 1886, the enthusiastic Degas could not stop admiring this work, believing that a woman was not given such masterful mastery of the brush.

Degas, Cassatt’s friend and teacher, seriously influenced her work, and many of her works are similar to the works of her mentor, but it is in “Morning Toilet” that the greatest similarity of the styles of the two masters is found.

Both artists worked independently on the subject of women washing themselves, but their approaches to revealing the theme differed significantly, and if the heroines of Cassatt’s works were depicted with warmth and sympathy, then in Degas’s “toilet work” reduced women, in his words, to “the level of an animal.”