Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
1878
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.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CF
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Accession Number
1983.1.18
Art Historical Context
Mary Cassatt’s “Little Girl in a Blue Armchair,” painted in 1878, offers a quietly captivating view of childhood. In this oil-on-canvas work, a young girl lounges with natural ease in a deep blue armchair, her relaxed pose filling the generous horizontal format. The painting’s dimensions—nearly 90 by 130 centimeters—allow the viewer to feel drawn into the same intimate space as the child. Cassatt, an American artist who exhibited with the French Impressionists, used the fluid qualities of oil paint to capture soft textures, subtle light, and everyday domestic moments. Rather than grand histor...
About the Artist
Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Born to a wealthy Pennsylvania family, she defied social conventions to pursue art professionally, settling permanently in Paris where Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist group in 1877. Her paintings of mothers and children—rendered with Impre...