| Artist |
Cassatt, Mary |
This is the only known work to have been a collaboration between Degas and Cassatt. In a letter to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1903, Cassatt recalled, 'I had done the child in the armchair, and he found that to be good and advised me on the background; he even worked on the background. I sent it to the American section of the Grand Exposition, but it was refused. Since M. Degas had thought it good, I was furious, especially because he had worked on it - at that time it seemed new, and the jury consisted of three people, of whom one was a pharmacist!' This taste of rejection, after a period of acceptance by the art establishment, contributed to Cassatt's lifelong distrust of juries. Temperamentally part of the Independent group before Degas' invitation to join it, Cassatt now experienced the practical drawbacks of rebellion. Nevertheless, "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair" shows her determination to recast her subject matter in an avant-garde fashion.
The brushwork is already confidently free, both in the treatment of the child's lacy dress and in the patterned upholstery, to which Degas may have contributed. Elsewhere, her debt to Degas' use of asymmetry and empty space is clear, and the background is untypical of her work in its extent and detail. The little girl's fractious boredom may be explained by the emptiness of this room, which, despite its elegant furnishings and the hint of sunlight from the apartment balcony, isolates her and her pet in their vast armchairs amid a sea of blue carpet. The child's formal clothes and squirming pose suggest a Sunday afternoon of enforced inactivity. Even the lap-dog sulks sleepily. Despite her tendency to inflict long sittings on her young models (this girl was the daughter of friends of Degas), here Cassatt demonstrates a charming sympathy for the trials of childhood. This was painted in the same year that Renoir began to gain public acceptance, with his "Madame Charpentier and her Children," in which his young sitters are posed with a more conservative sweetness and formality, a conscious sentimentality which Cassatt was always to resist.
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. |
