Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
1879–80
- Medium
- Etching, soft ground etching, aquatint, and drypoint on grayish-ivory wove paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image/plate: 30.5 × 12.6 cm (12 1/16 × 5 in.); Sheet: 34 × 17.5 cm (13 7/16 × 6 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Walter S. Brewster
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This print signals the close friendship between Edgar Degas and fellow Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. The two artists experimented with printmaking techniques, which Degas used to create this image of Cassatt as a confident modern woman enjoying the painting galleries of the Musee du Louvre, Paris. She is accompanied by a figure who is probably her sister Lydia. Degas, like Cassatt, collected Japanese prints, and the vertical format, pillared framing device, rear silhouettes, and fanning skirt in this print are strikingly japoniste features.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
