Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

A little girl slouches at ease in an oversized blue armchair in a spacious Parisian drawing room, her feet against the upholstery and her gaze calmly meeting the viewer. Painted during Mary Cassatt’s years in Paris in 1878, this portrait of the daughter of the artist’s friend stands among her most assured early works and was exhibited in the fourth Impressionist exhibition the following year. It shows how fully Cassatt had absorbed the loose brushwork and modern subject matter of her younger colleagues while bringing to it her own affectionate, sharply observed treatment of childhood.