Five O'Clock Tea
Mary Cassatt·1880
Historical Context
Five O'Clock Tea (1880, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is among the most refined of Cassatt's domestic interior scenes, depicting two women engaged in the fashionable ritual of afternoon tea in what appears to be the artist's own Paris apartment. The ritual of tea was associated with British cultural refinement and adopted enthusiastically by the Parisian haute bourgeoisie. Cassatt returned to this subject several times in the early 1880s, exploring the visual and social possibilities of gleaming silver tea services, fine china, and the quiet intimacy of female social exchange.
Technical Analysis
The gleaming silver tea service creates the composition's brightest passages, with Cassatt exploiting the reflective quality of the metal to introduce multiple concentrated light sources. She contrasts the precision with which she renders the silver against the looser treatment of the women's figures and the broadly suggested interior beyond.
