Little Girl in a Large Red Hat

Painted in 1881 and now in the Princeton Art Museum, this canvas of a little girl in an oversized red hat is one of Cassatt's most charming and direct child portraits from her early Impressionist period. The hat's bold color and slightly comical oversized quality give the portrait a quality of gentle humor that distinguishes it from more earnest child portraiture. Princeton's art museum collection represents the institutional collecting of French Impressionism by American universities.

The large red hat dominates the composition with a bold circular form, its warm red set against the child's pale face and the neutral background. Cassatt uses the hat's size to create gentle comedy — the child dwarfed by her oversized accessory — while rendering the face beneath with careful, affectionate precision.