Portrait of the Artist
Mary Cassatt·1874
Historical Context
Portrait of the Artist (1874, Metropolitan Museum of Art) is one of Cassatt's few self-portraits, executed at a formative moment in her career, when she had been living in Europe for several years and was developing her mature painterly identity. Self-portraiture was a complex undertaking for a woman artist in this era, simultaneously an assertion of professional seriousness and a negotiation of the conventions of female representation. Cassatt's self-portraits are notable for their directness and their refusal of vanity, presenting the artist as a working professional rather than a social ornament.
Technical Analysis
Executed on paper, this early self-portrait likely shows a more conventional academic approach than Cassatt's mature work, with careful tonal modeling of the face and direct, unsparing observation. The choice of paper as a support suggests a working study rather than a finished formal presentation.
