Modern Life
Mary Cassatt
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
1878
Oil on canvas, 89.5 × 129.8 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington
A small girl slumps in an overstuffed blue armchair beside a sleeping dog. Cassatt shows a bored child, not a doll-like model of good manners.
- The girl sprawls with one arm behind her head, as no posed portrait sitter would. The Impressionists wanted figures caught off guard, in natural, unposed moments.
- Possibly shown at the 1879 Impressionist exhibition.
- Degas, a friend of the girl's parents, probably worked on the background.
- The chairs crowd the floor and are cut off at the edges of the canvas.
- Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1983.
Nineteenth-century portraits usually showed children as small, well-behaved adults or emblems of innocence. Cassatt later built much of her career on children.
Themes
Image: National Gallery of Art Open Access · CC0