‘르 피가로’를 읽는 여인

In 1877 Mary Cassatt's parents left America to join their daughters in Paris, and soon after arriving her mother, Katherine, sat for this portrait. She is caught reading Le Figaro, at the time a paper men read, and that detail is the point. Cassatt shows an alert, self-possessed older woman absorbed in the news of the day, the small black pince-nez marking the act of looking as real mental work. The morning light falls flat and clear on the white dress and the printed sheet. Cassatt made more than one version of the scene, and this canvas has long since passed into private hands.