Image: Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, Looking Down

Description: One of America’s leading expatriate artists, Mary Cassatt settled in Paris in 1874, where she was greatly influenced by the pastels of her friend and mentor Edgar Degas. Pastel was described as Mary Cassatt’s "specific genre" in a review written in November 1889, by which time she had mastered the exacting technique of drawing with colored chalk, fully exploiting the medium’s painterly and spontaneous qualities. In this superb example, she depicts a seated, fashionably dressed woman with arm bent and elbow resting on the back of a cushioned chair. Cassatt’s bold strokes on the bonnet and colorful upholstery enliven these inanimate surfaces and offset the higher degree of finish on the woman’s face. The work relates to two others in which the identical model is shown arranging the veil of the black and green bonnet or sewing. Here, the focus is entirely on her pensive state. Since she is shown with hat and gloves, the environment is ambiguously public. This is neither one of Cassatt’s contemplative women reposing at home, nor one of Degas’s female subjects posing before the mirror at the milliner’s. While Cassatt’s sitters typically avoid the viewer’s gaze, here the total concealment of the woman’s eyes by her bonnet pays deference to her psychological privacy.
Title: English: Young woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, Looking Down
Credit: Princeton University Art Museum
Author: Mary Cassatt
Permission: This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: The author died in 1926, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain". This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No