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Lady at the Tea Table, 1885
Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm)
Gift of Mary Cassatt, 1923 (23.101)
The subject of this painting is Mrs. Robert Moore Riddle, a first cousin of Mary Cassatt's mother. Wearing a blue cape and a dark blue dress, Mrs. Riddle is seated at a table set with a blue-and-white gilded porcelain tea service, which her daughter had given to the Cassatt family. The authoritative demeanor of Mrs. Riddle, her elegant dress and fine jewelry, and the beautiful tea service bespeak a woman of taste and refinement engaged in a characteristic social activity of the period. The cropped and framed picture on the background wall was a recurring motif in the work of Cassatt's friend and mentor Edgar Degas. Cassatt shared with Degas and other Impressionists an appreciation of Japanese prints, which emphasize outline, silhouette, and flattened space, and this is reflected in the design of the painting. Mrs. Riddle's daughter objected to the size of her mother's nose in the portrait, which Cassatt kept until she gave it to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1923 at the urging of her friend the collector Louisine Havemeyer.

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