Degas/Cassatt

May 11 – October 5, 2014
West Building, Main Floor, Northeast Galleries

Mary Cassatt, *Little Girl in a Blue Armchair*, 1878, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

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.”

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Portrait after a Costume Ball (Portrait of Mme Dietz-Monnin), 1879, distemper with metallic paint and pastel on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, At the Theater, 1878/1879, pastel and gouache with metallic paint, Collection of Ann and Gordon Getty

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Fan Mount: Ballet Girls, 1879, watercolor, silver, and gold on silk, Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, Young Woman in Black (Portrait of Madame J), 1883, oil on canvas, Collection of the Maryland State Archives

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Actresses in Their Dressing Rooms, c. 1879/1880, etching and aquatint, National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection

Shown from the knees up, two young women with pale, peachy skin wearing white gowns sit close together and almost fill this vertical painting. The women are angled to our left and look in that direction. The young woman on our right has a heart-shaped face, dark blond hair gathered at the back of her head, and light blue eyes. Her full, coral-pink lips are closed, the corners in greenish shadows. Her dress is off the shoulders, has a tightly fitted bodice, and the skirt pools around her lap. The fabric is painted in strokes of pale shell pink, faint blue, and light mint green but our eye reads it as a white dress. She wears a navy-blue ribbon as a choker and long, frosty-green gloves come nearly to her elbows. She holds a bouquet in her lap, made up of cream-white, butter-yellow, and pale pink flowers with grass-green leaves and one blood-red rose. Her companion sits just beyond her on our left and covers the lower part of her face with an open fan. The fan is painted in silvery white decorated with swipes of daffodil yellow, teal green, and coral red. She has violet-colored eyes, a short nose, and her dark blond hair is smoothed over the top of her head and pulled back. She also wears long gloves with her arms crossed on the lap of her ice-blue gown. Along the right edge of hte painting, a sliver of a form mirroring the torso, shoulder, and back of the head of the young woman to our right appears just beyond her shoulder, painted in tones of cool blues. Two curving bands in golden yellow and spring green swiped with darker shades of green and gold arc behind the girls and fill the background. The space between the curves is filled with strokes of plum purple, dark red, and pink. The artist signed the lower right, “Mary Cassatt.”

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, The Loge, c. 1878–1880, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Chester Dale Collection

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, The Loge [recto], 1879–1880, graphite, National Gallery of Art, Chester Dale Collection

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, Two Young Ladies Seated in a Loge, Facing Right, 1879–1880, softground etching and aquatint, Marc Rosen Fine Art, New York, and Adelson Galleries, New York

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre, c. 1879, pastel, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Henry P. McIlhenny Collection in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny, 1986. The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, 1879–1880, softground etching, drypoint, aquatint, and etching retouched with red chalk, The Art Institute of Chicago, Albert Roullier Memorial Collection. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery, 1885, pastel over softground etching, drypoint, aquatint, and etching, The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Kate L. Brewster. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, c. 1879–1884, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, Gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and the Regents' Major Acquisitions Fund, Smithsonian Institution. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, The Visitor, c. 1881, softground etching, drypoint, aquatint, etching, and fabric texture, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Image © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA. Photographer Michael Agee

A pale-skinned woman bends over a basin of water on a washstand in this vertical, colored print. The woman is angled away from us so only her ear and the curve of her forehead are visible beyond her hunched shoulder. Her upper body is bare, her dress having been unfastened so it hangs around her waist. The dress is striped with grass green, rose pink, and the cream white of the paper. Light gleams on her auburn hair, which is tied up and back. She cups her hands in the light blue water of the faintly yellow basin. Two bottles sit at the back corner of the washstand, and a mirror reflects the top of her head. The fawn-brown washstand is boxy, and a handled white pitcher painted with muted pink flowers is at the front left corner, which is closest to us. The wall beyond the washstand is marine blue, and the floor is brighter sapphire blue with a pattern of celery-green leaves. A mark with an oval, or a mirrored C, over an uppercase M, is stamped in royal blue at the bottom center of the print. The sheet is inscribed with graphite across the right half of the bottom margin, “Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy Mary Cassatt.”

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, 1890–1891, color drypoint and aquatint, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald

A band of several galloping horses and riders move across the center of this vertical painting. The color palette is dominated by blended earthy brown, green, and pale pink. The horses, which have reddish-brown coats and tails, nearly span the width of the painting. They move to our left with their legs fully extended. Underneath the horses’ flying legs lies the body of a man. The felled rider faces upward, his eyes closed and his legs splayed. He has a light brown beard, mustache, and hair, and pale tan skin. He wears brown riding boots with black tops, white breeches, and a pink jersey with black sleeves. His riding helmet, with a matching pink cover, lies behind his head on the ground. At least three additional horses are in the band, and the two foremost have empty saddles. The two horses beyond them, farther into the picture, have male riders, who wear riding outfits and helmets in colors of smudged and blended orange, lavender purple, and green. They also have brown mustaches and beards. The band races through a field painted with a muddy green interspersed with strokes of orange and white. The horizon line is high, just above the level of the horses’ backs, about four-fifths of the way up the painting. Blue sky peeks out amid a mixture of pale pink and yellow clouds above. There are trees in the background indicated by a few strokes and dashes of paint. The painting style is loose and brushy throughout, without sharp detail or lines, except for the sketched-in black lines that delineate the bodies and tack of the horses.

Degas/Cassatt

Edgar Degas, Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey, 1866, reworked 1880–1881 and c. 1897, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Degas/Cassatt

Mary Cassatt, Child Picking a Fruit, 1893, oil on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Gift of Ivor and Anne Massey. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Photographer Travis Fullerton

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

From the moment the American Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) made her debut in 1879 with the group of artists known as the impressionists, her name has been linked with that of the Frenchman Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Cassatt stated that her first encounter with Degas’s art “changed my life,” while Degas, upon seeing Cassatt’s art for the first time, reputedly remarked, “there is someone who feels as I do.” It was this shared sensibility as much as Cassatt’s extraordinary talent that drew Degas’s attention.

The affinity between the two artists is undeniable. Both were realists who drew their inspiration from the human figure and the depiction of modern life, while they eschewed landscape almost entirely.  Both were highly educated, known for their intelligence and wit, and from well-to-do banking families. They were peers, moving in the same social and intellectual circles. Cassatt, who had settled in Paris in 1874, first met Degas in 1877 when he invited her to participate with the impressionists at their next exhibition. Over the next decade, the two artists engaged in an intense dialogue, turning to each other for advice and challenging each other to experiment with materials and techniques. Both made printmaking an important aspect of their careers and for a time collaborated on their endeavors. Their admiration and support for each other endured long after their art began to head in different directions: Degas continued to acquire Cassatt’s work, while she promoted his to collectors back in the United States. They remained devoted friends for forty years, until Degas’s death.

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Sponsors: The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in celebration of its 100th Anniversary.

The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation is the foundation sponsor.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Attendance: 381,178

Catalog: Degas/Cassatt. By Kimberly Jones et al. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2014.

Brochure: Degas/Cassatt, by Kimberly A. Jones. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2014.

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