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Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Mary Cassatt1878

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States

_Little Girl in a Blue Armchair_ stands as a testament to the newly formed relationship between Mary Cassatt and the impressionists, and to her assimilation of a freer style of painting. With a limited palette and vibrant brushstroke, she created a dynamic interplay of forms that is echoed in this captured moment between rest and play.


Light enters the picture through the French doors in the background and enlivens the texture and pattern of the inanimate objects in the room. The tilted picture plane draws attention to the haphazard arrangement of the four large, blue chairs, and the brownish-gray floor in between them is painted with an energetic brushwork that gives it a life of its own. In contrast, the little girl—flopped on a chair in a moment of boredom or exhaustion—and the small dog are in a state of utter repose.


Cassatt reworked the painting with the help of her friend Edgar Degas and exhibited it along with 10 other paintings in her debut exhibition with the impressionists in 1879.

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  • Title: Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
  • Creator: Mary Cassatt
  • Date Created: 1878
  • Physical Dimensions: overall: 89.5 x 129.8 cm (35 1/4 x 51 1/8 in.) framed: 114.3 x 154.3 x 5.7 cm (45 x 60 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.)
  • Provenance: Purchased from the artist by (Amboise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris); (Hector Brame, Paris); sold November 1963 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.
  • Rights: CC0
  • Medium: oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

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