Frau mit Perlenkette in einer Loge

Cassatt showed this at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1879, the first time she took part, brought in by her friend Edgar Degas. The woman in the red chair is her older sister Lydia, who often sat for her, dressed for an evening at the opera and lit by the gaslight of the house. That artificial light is the point. Cassatt watched how it fell on skin and on the pearls at Lydia's throat, the same problem Degas was working on in his theatre scenes. Behind her a mirror opens up the tiers of the box and the glow of the auditorium. Lydia was already ill by this time, and much of Cassatt's work in these years was made close to home, with her sister as the model at hand.