La Toilette

The American painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt spent her professional life in Paris, where she was a member of the Impressionist group. "La Toilette" belongs to a group of ten color prints that Cassatt showed at her first independent exhibition (at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris) in 1891. The abstract, linear quality of the nude's back drew the attention of Cassatt's colleague and sometime collaborator, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (1834-1917), who exclaimed, "I do not admit that a woman can draw like that."

Signature: in graphite outside platemark at lower right: Mary Cassatt

Inscription: Edition de 25 serie Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy / Mary Cassatt

Marking: at lower center of margin: Blue MC collector's stamp

Donor: Paul J. Sachs

Breeskin 148 v/v; Mathews & Shapio 10 iv/iv; D-R.37

Adelyn Dohme Breeskin Mary Cassatt. A Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Work. Washington, D.C., 1979, cat. no. 148, fig. no. Frontispiece, p. 64, ill.

Nancy Mowll Mathews, Barbara Stern Shapiro Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York, 1989, cat. no. 10, fig. no. Cat. 10-IV, p. 134, ill.

Elliot Bostwick Davis "Mary Cassatt Color Prints" in The Magazine Antiques. No. 4, 154, New York, c. 1998, fig. no. Plate II, p. 485, ill.

George T. M. Shackelford, Xavier Rey Degas and the Nude. Ex. cat. Boston, 2012, fig. no. 125, 115, 225, ill.