Lady at the Tea Table

Mary Cassatt painted this portrait of her mother's cousin, Mary Dickinson Riddle, around 1884, as a thank-you. Mrs. Riddle's daughter had given the Cassatts a gilded blue-and-white Chinese porcelain tea service, the very set you see her hand resting on here, and Cassatt offered the picture in return. The gift misfired. The family found it unflattering, chiefly that it made her nose too large, and quietly declined it. So the painting stayed with the artist for decades. Only near the end of her life, pressed by her friend and fellow collector Louisine Havemeyer, did Cassatt send it to the Metropolitan Museum, in 1923, where its quiet grey and blue harmonies were at last admired.