The Lamp is one of Cassatt's groundbreaking series of ten impressions en couleurs, first exhibited at Galeries Durand-Ruel in April 1891 and again in her retrospective of exhibition of 1893. In these prints, she appropriates the Japanese aesthetic and re-creates it in European terms, not on woodblock, but on copper plate. She transforms the theme of ukiyo-e prints, from the daily life of a Japanese courtesan to that of a modern European bourgeois woman.

Interiors with women are a frequent theme in Cassatt's work. The deliberate constraints of the format of the typical Japanese woodblock print inspired this compact composition, which is notable for its implicit reference to the Japanese fascination with the beauty of the line of a woman's neck.