Portrait of Mary Cassatt

Degas's portrait of his friend and fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt, painted around 1884 and now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, is one of the most psychologically penetrating images in the Impressionist portrait tradition. Cassatt is shown seated, leaning forward with photographs or cards in her hands, her posture suggesting concentration and intelligence rather than the decorative passivity typical of female portrait subjects. Their friendship was complex — marked by artistic admiration shadowed by Cassatt's reported ambivalence about Degas's portrayal of her — and the painting's directness suggests a relationship between equals rather than artist and muse.

Degas handles Cassatt's form with characteristic asymmetry — the body angled differently from the direction of the gaze — creating a sense of caught movement that distinguishes his portraits from static studio poses. The objects in her hands are rendered sketchily, drawing attention to the face as the painting's emotional and compositional centre.