Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre
1879–80
Medium
Etching, soft ground etching, aquatint, and drypoint on grayish-ivory wove paper
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.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
76002
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 s...
About the Artist
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas · 1834–1917
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, born on July 19, 1834, in Paris to a prosperous banking family, was the eldest of five children. His mother, Célestine Musson, a Creole from New Orleans whose father Germain Musson had roots in Haiti, died when Degas was thirteen, leaving his father Augustin and unmarried uncles to guide him. Educated at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he earned a baccalauréat in...