Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery

Prints and Drawings

1885

Edgar Degas
French, 1834-1917

Edgar Degas enjoyed a close friendship with fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt. To produce this work, he first made an etching of his friend and her sister, Lydia, then covered the sheet with pastel. Degas depicted Mary with her back to the viewer, balancing in a confident pose; her rigid right arm and umbrella move diagonally across the bottom half of the sheet. This air of assurance contrasts with the attitude of Lydia, who is seated and looks up timidly at the art from a guidebook.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
Title: Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1885
Medium: Pastel, over etching, aquatint, drypoint, and crayon électrique on tan wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed recto, lower left, in black chalk: "Degas/ 85"
Dimensions: Image/plate: 30.5 × 12.7 cm (12 1/16 × 5 in.); Sheet: 31.3 × 13.7 cm (12 3/8 × 5 7/16 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Kate L. Brewster
Reference Number: 1949.515
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/111902/manifest.json

Loys Delteil, Le Peinture-graveur illustre 9 (Paris, 1906-30), no. 29.
Jean Adhemar and Francoise Cachin, Degas: The Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes (New York, 1974), no. 54.
Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century 2 (Chicago, 1979), p. 43, no. 2G2.
Paul Andre Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre (New York,1984), p. 329, no. 583 (ill.).
Sue Welsh Reed and Barbara Stern Shapiro, Edgar Degas: The Painter as Printmaker, exh. cat. (Boston, 1984), no. 52, XII-XIIIa/XX.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas (Paris, 1988), no. 266 (ill.).
Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas (Chicago, 1996), pp. 47, 50, 71 (ill. detail), 94 (ill.), and 110, pl. 23b.
Chelsea Foxwell et. al, Smart Museum of Art, “Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints”, (University of Chicago 2012), p. 120, fig. 98

London, Grafton Gallery, 1905, cat. 49.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Degas in The Art Institute of Chicago,” July 19-Sept. 23, 1984, pp. 117-19, cat. 53 (ill.), cat. by Richard R. Brettell and Suzanne Folds McCullagh.
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, “Degas,” 1988 cat. 266, p. 440 (ill.); also the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Changing Impressions: Experimental Printing from the 17th through the 19th Centuries,” Apr. 1 1990-Mar. 3, 1991.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman” Oct. 10, 1998-Jan. 10, 1999, cat. 1, p. 108 (color ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, “Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity,” June 26-Sept. 22, 2013, pp. 225, 253, 254, 297, cat. 125 (ill.), cat. by Gloria Groom et. al.
Washington D.C., The National Gallery, “Degas, Cassatt,” May 11-Oct. 5, 2014, pp. 62, 89, 91, 103, 156, pl. 48 (ill.), cat. by Kimberly A. Jones, et. al.
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, “Manet Degas”, March 27 - July 23, 2023, traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 18, 2023 - January 7, 2024, p. 154 (ill.), 294, cat. 71, cat. by Stephan Wolohojian and Ashley Dunn, et. al.

Sold by Ivan Stchoukine (1869-1908), Moscow, to Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, Dec. 28, 1900 [Letter from Durand-Ruel dated May 10, 1983 curatorial file]; sold to Walter S. (1872-1954) and Kate L. (c. 1879-1947) Brewster, Lake Forest, Ill., Apr. 24, 1926 [invoice in curatorial file]; bequeathed by Kate L. Brewster to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.

Reed & Shapiro 52 XII-XIIIa/XX

Delteil 29 XVII?/XX

Duvigneau, Götz 54 ?/XX

Lemoisne 583

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.