Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly

The woman crocheting here is Lydia Cassatt, the painter's older sister. Lydia had left Philadelphia to live with Mary in Paris, since unmarried women of their class were not expected to keep house alone, and by 1880 she was seriously ill with a kidney disease that would take her two years later. That summer the family took a house at Marly-le-Roi, west of Paris, and Cassatt painted her sister outdoors in the walled garden, overdressed for the heat and absorbed in her needlework. Handwork like this was becoming a genteel pastime just as factories were mechanizing the making of cloth. Cassatt rarely painted in the open air, but here she caught the flicker of full sunlight her Impressionist friends were chasing, breaking across Lydia's pale dress and the flowers around her.