Ritratto dell'artista

Mary Cassatt made this self-portrait around 1878, at a turning point in her life. An American from Pittsburgh, she had settled in Paris and had just been invited by Edgar Degas to show with the Impressionists, the loose group of painters the official Salon kept rejecting. She was one of very few women in it, and the only American. She shows herself seated informally, in a white dress and a hat trimmed for the outdoors, leaning back with a direct, unfussy gaze. It is done quickly in gouache and watercolor, loose and light, more like a private note to herself than a formal picture. She holds nothing in her hands, no brush and no fan, just her own steady look back at the viewer.