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A small brown dog and a pale-skinned little girl wearing a white dress sit in matching celestial-blue armchairs in this horizontal painting. To our right, the girl sits with her legs angled to our left. She slumps back with her legs spread, and her left elbow, on our right, is bent so that hand rests behind her head. Her other elbow is draped over the armrest. Her dark brown hair appears to be pulled back, and tawny brown eyes under faint brows gaze down and to our left. She has a small nose set in a round face and a coral-pink mouth closed in a straight line. Her white dress has touches of gray, soft pink, and powder blue with a wide plaid sash around her waist. The pine-green, black, and sapphire-blue sash is accented with overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of burnt orange, light blue, and mustard yellow. Her socks match her sash and come up to mid-calf, over black shoes with silver buckles. The small dog has scruffy black fur and a russet-brown face. It lies curled in the chair opposite the girl, to our left, with its eyes closed and ears pricked up. The rounded backs of the upholstered chairs curve down to become the low arms. The vivid and light blue fabric of the chairs is scattered with loosely painted strokes of avocado and forest green, peach pink, cherry red, plum purple, and white. Beyond the chairs closest to us is another armchair and an armless loveseat, both covered with the same fabric. They sit at the back of the room, in a corner flooded with silvery light coming through four windows on the right side. The furniture is arranged on a peanut-brown floor. The artist signed in the lower left, “Mary Cassatt.”

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878

Mary Cassatt

Not on View

Cassatt was known for her sensitive depictions of children. Rather than showing them as miniature adults, she painted them as individuals with moods and personalities. This relatable little girl was the daughter of friends of painter Edgar Degas. (Degas himself was a friend of Cassatt’s.)

Cassatt captures the girl in a moment of rest, sprawling across a chair. Is she tired from play? Has an adult told her to behave? Or is she bored? Whatever happened, her pouty expression and slouched body language suggest that she has her own opinions on the matter.

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Little Girl in a Blue Armchair stands as a testament to the newly formed relationship between Mary Cassatt and the impressionists, and to her assimilation of a freer style of painting. With a limited palette and vibrant brushstroke, she created a dynamic interplay of forms that is echoed in this captured moment between rest and play.

Light enters the picture through the French doors in the background and enlivens the texture and pattern of the inanimate objects in the room. The tilted picture plane draws attention to the haphazard arrangement of the four large, blue chairs, and the brownish-gray floor in between them is painted with an energetic brushwork that gives it a life of its own. In contrast, the little girl—flopped on a chair in a moment of boredom or exhaustion—and the small dog are in a state of utter repose.

Cassatt reworked the painting with the help of her friend Edgar Degas and exhibited it along with 10 other paintings in her debut exhibition with the impressionists in 1879.

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Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 89.5 × 129.8 cm (35 1/4 × 51 1/8 in.)

framed: 109.22 × 152.72 × 6.35 cm (43 × 60 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1983.1.18

Artists / Makers

Mary Cassatt (artist) American, 1844 - 1926

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Detail Information

Inscription

lower left: Mary Cassatt; on stretcher crossbar in pencil: M. Vollard / 6 Rue Lafitte

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by (Amboise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris); (Hector Brame, Paris); sold November 1963 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.

Associated Names

Mellon, Paul
Vollard, Ambroise

Exhibition History

1879: Possibly Le 4e Exposition de Peinture [Fourth Impressionist Exhibition], Paris, 1879, no. 47 as Portrait de petite fille.

1912: Exposition d'art moderne a l'Hôtel de la Revue "Les Arts", Paris, 1912, no. 83

1928: Portraits et Figures de Femmes Ingres à Picasso, Galerie La Renaissance, Paris, 1928, no. 27

1966: French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 121, repro

1970: Mary Cassatt 1844-1926, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970, no. 11, repro.

1986: Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist, repro.

1987: American Women Artists 1830-1930, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, and other venues, 1987, no. 41, repro. (Washington only)

1990: Französische Impressionisten und ihre Wegbereiter aus der National Gallery of Art, Washington und dem Cincinnati Art Museum, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1990, no. 54, repro.

1998: Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998-1999, no. 11, repro., as Portrait of a Little Girl.

1999: An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.

2006: Americans in Paris 1860-1900, The National Gallery, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006 - 2007, no. 34.

2009: American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009-2010, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 114.

2011: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The National Art Center, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2011, no. 7, repro.

2017: Hokusai and Japonisme, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2017-2018, no. 58, repro.

2018: Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist in Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 2018, no. 4, repro.

Bibliography

1913: Borgmeyer, Charles Louis. The Master Impressionists. Chicago, 1913: repro. 249.

1966: Kuh, Katherine. "Golden Loans for a Silver Anniversary." Saturday Review (19 March 1966): 46.

1970: Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970, no. 56.

1976: Harris, Ann Sutherland and Linda Nochlin. Women Artists 1550-1950. Exh. cat., Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1976: 240, under no. 91.

1979: Munro, Eleanor. Originals: American Women Artists. New York, 1979: 67, repro. 73.

1980: Pollock, Griselda. Mary Cassatt. London, 1980: 66.

1988: Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 146, no. 50, color repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 38, repro.

1994: Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Mary Cassatt: A Life. New York, 1994: 125, repro.

1996: Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Cassatt: A Retrospective. New York: H.L. Levin Associates, 1996, pl. 12.

1996: White, Barbara Ehrlich. Impressionists: Side by Side. New York, 1996: 189, repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 366-367, no. 302, color repro.

2014: Jones, Kimberly A. "Mary Cassatt's Little Girl in a Blue Armchair: Unraveling an Impressionist Puzzle." Archives of American Art Journal 53, no. 1&2 (Fall 2014): 116-121, color fig.

2018: Barnes, Julian. "Not in a Box." Review of Mary Cassatt, une impressionniste américaine à Paris (Musée Jacquemart-André, 2018). London Review of Books 40, no. 28 (26 April 2018): 9, color repro.