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Two women, one holding a baby on her lap, sit on the long bench seat of an omnibus in this vertical, colored print. The women and their full skirts take up almost the width of the composition against the peacock-blue bench, which extends off both sides. The women and baby’s skin are the color of the cream-white paper. The woman to our left wears a tan-colored, high-collared dress, gloves, and hat. She looks off to our right, almost in profile. She has a round face and the hint of a double chin. One gloved hand rests on a cane. The other woman holds the baby and tips her head down toward the child. That second woman wears a tea rose-pink dress and a hat with areas of darker pink, fern green, and white. Both women’s black hair is pulled up under their hats. The baby’s ruffled white bonnet, blousy garment, stockings, and shoes are also the white of the paper, though the lips are picked out with pink. The structure of the women’s bodices, puffy long sleeves, and long skirts as well as the baby’s clothing are outlined in black. A row of windows behind them, parallel to the top of the bench, are blank, also the color of the paper. The panel behind the women’s legs is peanut brown, and the top of the omnibus is white as well. The artist signed the work with her initials in graphite in the bottom left, “MC.”

Mary Cassatt

In the Omnibus, 1890-1891

Not on View

Medium

color drypoint and aquatint on laid paper

Dimensions

plate: 36.51 × 26.67 cm (14 3/8 × 10 1/2 in.)

sheet: 43.2 × 30.1 cm (17 × 11 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Rosenwald Collection

Catalogue Raisonné

Mathews and Shapiro 1989, no. 7, iii/vii

Accession Number

1943.3.2753

Artists / Makers

Mary Cassatt (artist) American, 1844 - 1926

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

recto: below image at left in graphite: M.C.; at bottom right in graphite in later hand: A; verso: none

Marks and Labels

recto: none; verso: Lessing Julius Rosenwald (Lugt 1760b) and National Gallery of Art

Exhibition History

1951: Mary Cassatt and her Parisian Friends, Pasadena Art Institute, CA, 1951, no. 38.

1965: Master Prints from the Rosenwald Collection, Virginia Museum of Arts, Richmond; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1965, no. 113.

1982: Lessing J. Rosenwald: Tribute to a Collector, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1982, no. 90, repro.

1989: Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, 1989-1990., no. 7-III, repro.

Bibliography

1979: Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, no. 145, ii/iv.

1982: Fine, Ruth E. Lessing J. Rosenwald: Tribute to a Collector. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1982, no. 90.

1989: Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, no. 7, iii/vii.