Detail of a Portrait of a Young Girl by Mary Cassatt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2018

Title: Portrait of a Young Girl

Artist: Mary Cassatt (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1844–1926 Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise)

Date: 1899

Culture: American

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 29 x 24 1/8 in. (73.7 x 61.3 cm)

Credit Line: From the Collection of James Stillman, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, 1922

Accession Number: 22.16.18


In "Portrait of a Young Girl," Cassatt posed her young model outdoors, probably at or near Château Beaufresne, the home the artist had purchased in the Oise River valley, about fifty miles northwest of Paris, in 1894. As in contemporary images of women and girls by William Merritt Chase, Frank W. Benson, and others, the girl appears immersed in nature and isolated from the outside world. The high vantage point, flattened space, and absence of a horizon, all suggesting the influence of Japanese art, are compositional devices that Cassatt also used in her color prints of the 1890s.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10406