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American Paintings and Sculpture: All

Work 2,609 of 3,349
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This information may change as the result of ongoing research.
* This information may change as the result of ongoing research.
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
Portrait of the Artist
1878
Watercolor, gouache on wove paper laid down to buff-colored wood-pulp paper
23 5/8 x 16 3/16 in. (60 x 41.1 cm)
Bequest of Edith H. Proskauer, 1975
1975.319.1
Cassatt painted this self-portrait, one of only two known, a year after Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists. His influence is reflected in the unusual sage-green background, the attention to contrasting complementary colors, and the figure's daring asymmetrical pose and indifference to the viewer. Louisine Elder (later Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer), a young American Cassatt had met in Paris in 1874, acquired this self-portrait from the artist by 1879 and lent it to the thirteenth annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in New York, in February 1880.