She visited the Paris World's Fair (the Exposition Universelle (1878)) with one of her sisters in 1878, which may have inspired or encouraged her ambitions to become a painter. In 1888 she returned to Europe, traveling through Italy, Spain, and France, where she met with the painter Rosa Bonheur, and in 1890 she settled in Paris and enrolled in art school at the Académie Julian, studying with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jules Joseph Lefebvre.