La Musique

In April 1874 a group of painters rented the photographer Nadar's old rooms on the boulevard des Capucines and held the show that got them called Impressionists. Cassatt, who had just settled in Paris for good, was not in it. She was still sending to the Salon, and Degas, looking at what she showed that year, is said to have remarked that here was someone who felt as he did. He asked her to join the independents three years later. This musical party dates from that same 1874, painted in oil on paper that was afterwards laid down on canvas, a little under a metre high. A Paris couple, Monsieur and Madame René Mayer, gave it to the Petit Palais in 1966, and it has hung in the city's own collection ever since.