Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878, National Gallery of Art) is one of Cassatt's most innovative early canvases and a work Degas reportedly helped compose. The child sprawls with unselfconscious abandon across an oversized armchair, accompanied by a small dog — a radical departure from decorous child portraiture of the era. When submitted to the 1878 Universal Exhibition in Paris, the American jury rejected it, reportedly because of Degas's involvement. The painting's radical cropping, high-key palette, and informal energy make it among the most distinctly modern works Cassatt produced.

The composition uses dynamic diagonal cropping borrowed from photography and Japanese prints, cutting off chairs at the edges to create spatial tension. Cassatt renders the striped blue upholstery with confident parallel strokes, contrasting with the more painterly, freely worked floor and child.