Afternoon Tea Party

1890-1891

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

Mary Cassatt

Two women with pale, peachy skin sit next to a table holding a silver tray and royal-blue tea cups and saucers in this colored, vertical etching and aquatint. Faint black lines outline the women, their features, clothing, and objects in the room, and each area is filled in with a flat color. The women face each other and take up most of the composition. Both have oval faces, rounded noses, pale pink lips, and their brown hair is pulled up and back. The woman to our right leans forward as she holds up a blue plate with her right hand, closer to us. The other hand rests on the arm of her tawny-brown chair. Her dress has a petal pink bodice and long skirt with fog-white long sleeves and white fabric covering her chest and tucked into the low, rounded neckline. The other woman’s blue cap has a celery-green feather and is tied in a bow under the chin. She wears a hip-length, black cloak over a pale, sage-green dress. She looks down at the plate and holds what might be a cookie or biscuit with one hand and a cup and a dish-like saucer with the other. Her lips are downturned and her head pulled slightly back to create a double chin. She sits upright in another brown chair. In the lower right corner of the sheet, the round gray table is barely bigger than the round gray tray it holds. On it are two more cups and saucers and a silver jug, presumably holding milk. What might be another cup and saucer set or the teapot is cut off by the right edge of the paper. The rims of the cups and saucers are edged with gold. A very pale, mint-green screen with openings across the top stands to the left behind the second woman, and a window is behind the first. Spiky fronds of a houseplant angle up toward the sunlight, and a coral-pink curtain is pulled to the left side. Squiggles and flowers printed in rust red suggest a pattern on white curtains covering the window and the pink curtain to the left. The wall behind the screen is straw yellow. The artist signed and inscribed the sheet under the lower right corner, “Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy, Mary Cassatt (25 épreuves) serie unique.” A tiny dark blue stamp with a short, wide C overlaid on a capital letter M is inked along the bottom edge of the image, and writing in graphite in the lower left corner of the sheet reads, “E 9539 set of 10 – n 3.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color drypoint and aquatint with touches of gold metallic paint on wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 34.8 x 26.4 cm (13 11/16 x 10 3/8 in.)
    sheet: 42.5 x 31.1 cm (16 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1963.10.256

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Mathews and Shapiro 1989, no. 13, v/v


Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1936

  • Mary Cassatt, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, 1936, no. 38.

1965

  • Graphic Arts from the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965.

1967

  • Miss Mary Cassatt: Paintings and Graphic Arts, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, 1967.

1970

  • Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970.

1982

  • Mary Cassatt: Graphic Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, MI; and Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, 1982.

1989

  • Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamston, MA, 1989-1990, no. 13-V (NGA), repro.

1998

  • Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998-1999, no. 64, as The Visit (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1979

  • Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, no. 151, iv/iv.

1989

  • Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, no. 13, v/v.

1998

  • Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman. Exh. cat. The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998-1999: 82, no. 64.

Inscriptions

recto: below image, at right in graphite: Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy / Mary Cassatt / (25 épreuves) / serie unique

Markings

recto: Mary Cassatt (Lugt 604); verso: none

Watermarks

J Whatman 1862

Wikidata ID

Q65511212


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