On a Balcony

Look at what the woman is reading: the day's newspaper. When Mary Cassatt painted this around 1879, an American in Paris and the only one welcomed into the Impressionist circle, that small detail carried weight. A woman of her class, at home in a loose morning dress on a balcony above a garden, would be expected to hold a novel. Cassatt gave her the news instead, and placed her, in undress and at her ease, inside the modern day unfolding outside. Behind her the flowers are laid in quick strokes of red and pink and yellow, and the blue balcony rail closes off the green enclosure. She showed the painting at the Impressionist exhibition of 1880.