Born into a modest family, Marie Bracquemond, originally Quivoron, was an Impressionist artist known for the diversity of her work. She first trained in Étampes in the 1850s, before receiving lessons from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In the 1860s, she continued her training in Paris with Désiré François Laugée, Émile Signol and Hugues Merle. Between 1859 and 1875, she began her career as a painter and exhibited at the Salon, initially under the name Pasquiou or Pasquiou-Quivoron. Her artistic activity then became a source of income for the household she shared with her mother and half-sister, creating copies on commission and teaching drawing for the City of Paris.

In 1869, her marriage to engraver and ceramist Félix Bracquemond, whom she met at the Louvre Museum, marked a turning point. Between 1872 and 1881, she worked in the Auteuil studio and participated in the renewal of ceramic decoration for the Haviland factory. For the 1878 World's Fair, she created a monumental panel, now lost, entitled Les Muses des arts (The Muses of the Arts). She introduced scenes of modern life into ceramics, then into press drawings and painting, notably featuring female figures outdoors and studies of light in her garden in Sèvres.