Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery

Degas's two paintings of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre — one in the Etruscan gallery, one in the paintings galleries — were produced around 1879–1880 and represent a remarkable double portrait of his friend and fellow painter as an engaged viewer and interpreter of art. Cassatt had recently joined the Impressionist circle and was working alongside Degas on printmaking projects. In the paintings gallery version, Cassatt stands before the canvases with her characteristic straight-backed confidence, her umbrella serving as a compositional support — a woman who belongs in the museum as a professional.

Degas employs a tall, narrow format derived from his printmaking experiments, the vertical picture plane slicing the gallery space at an angle that places the viewer behind and slightly above the two women. His characteristic asymmetric cropping and tilted spatial composition are at their most extreme here, the Louvre interior reduced to angular planes of ochre parquet and grey wall.