submitted two paintings she had recently completed to the Société des Artistes Indépendants. The portraits of her husband Thomas Sergeant Perry (1889) and of her daughter Edith Perry (1889) were accepted by the Salon and with this accomplishment Perry's career began in France. Perry's success in 1889 made it possible for her to be one of the select few admitted to Alfred Stevens' class in Paris. Stevens was known for his "elegant interiors featuring genteel ladies lost in their reveries". While in Paris, she became friends with Mary Cassatt, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet. Career Giverny In 1889, Perry first encountered Claude Monet's work in Georges Petit's gallery. Inspired by his work, the Perrys spent the next summer in Giverny, where Monet lived, in order to further expose Lilla to the Impressionist's style. Between 1889 and 1909 Perry spent nine summers in Giverny. It was here that she fully found herself as an artist. During her time in Giverny, she formed a close friendship with Claude Monet whose impressionistic handling of color and light greatly inspired her work. In addition, she also worked with a cadre of American artists who had found their way to Giverny including Theodore Robinson, John Leslie Breck, and Theodore Earl Butler. There is a distinct shift observed in Perry's work after she arrived in Giverny. Her La Petite Angèle, II (1888) illustrates the dramatic evolution her style during this period. Unlike her earlier portraits, like The Letter, which relied on more traditional techniques to carefully render the subject matter – La Petite Angèle, II is clearly impressionistic in style with its free form brushstrokes that capture the impression of light and color. Rather than blending together each brushstroke, Perry allowed the composition to be "raw", thus allowing a vibrancy to be imbued in the canvas that was not possible in her earlier works. Giverny and more specifically Claude Monet, inspired Perry to work with en plein air forms, impressionistic brushstrokes, soft colors, and poppy red. In the window of La Petite Angèle, II we see the beginnings of what would become Perry's love affair with the Impressionist's handling of the landscape theme. By the fall of 1889 Perry had departed from Giverny to tour Belgium and the Netherlands and she had returned to Boston with her family in 1891 with a painting by Monet and a series of landscapes by John Breck. Return to Boston