Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery

Edgar Degas French
 Sitter Mary Cassatt American

Not on view

When Degas met the American expatriate painter Mary Cassatt, he was immersed in a period of experimentation with printmaking processes. This etching of Cassatt and her sister in a gallery at the Louvre was intended to appear in the first issue of Le jour et la nuit, a journal on which the two artists collaborated with Camille Pissarro and Félix Bracquemond but that was never realized. Degas’s unconventional choice to depict Cassatt from behind has often been cited as a demonstration of Edmond Duranty’s statement on modern portraiture: “With a back we can discover a temperament, an age, a social position.”

Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris), Soft-ground, drypoint, aquatint, and etching; third state of nine

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Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris), Soft-ground, drypoint, aquatint, and etching; third state of nine
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris), Soft-ground, drypoint, aquatint, and etching; third state of nine

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