Afternoon Tea Party

1890-1891

Mary Cassatt

Artist, American, 1844 - 1926

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 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 hair is pulled up and back. The woman to our right has brown hair and 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 wears a blue cap over black hair. The hat has a celery-green feather and is tied in a bow under the chin. She wears a hip-length, charcoal-gray 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 painted 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).” 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.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

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

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 34.77 × 26.35 cm (13 11/16 × 10 3/8 in.)
    sheet: 43.5 × 30.4 cm (17 1/8 × 11 15/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1946.21.77

  • Catalogue Raisonné

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


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Roger Marx [1859-1913], Paris (Lugt 2229); Robert Hartshorne (1866-1927), New Jersey (Lugt 2215b); (sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 23 January 1946, lot 37); Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown, PA; acquired 1946 by the National Gallery of Art

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1950

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt. Rosenwald Collection and gift of Miss Elisabeth Achelis, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1950.

1951

  • Mary Cassatt and her Parisian friends, Pasadena Art Institute, CA, 1951, no. 44.

1958

  • Color Etchings and Aquatints by Mary Cassatt, Ogunquit Museum, ME, 1958.

1962

  • Paintings, drawings and graphic works by Manet, Degas, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1962, no. 140.

1963

  • Prints and Drawings by Mary Cassatt, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1963.

1964

  • Prints by Mary Cassatt, organized by the Smithsonian Travelling Exhibition Service and circulated to 10 venues (Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY; Norton Gallery & School of Art, Palm Beach, FL; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; Charles & Emma Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH; Columbus Gallery of Fine Art, Columbus, OH; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; and A.D. White Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY), 1964-1965.

1965

  • Paintings and Sculpture by Americans of Our Times, Museum of Art of Ogunquit, ME, 1965, no cat.

1972

  • A Selection of Prints from the Rosenwald Collection, Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, ME, 1972.

1973

  • Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, Newport Harbour Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA; Santa Barbara Museum, CA, 1973-1974.

1977

  • Prints of Paris: The 1890s, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1977.

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, iv/v.

Inscriptions

recto: below image, at right, in graphite: Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy / Mary Cassatt / (25 épreuves); verso: at lower left, in graphite, in later hand: A 78416 / 13764; at lower right, in graphite, in later hand: CO xv [underlined]

Markings

recto: Mary Cassatt (Lugt 604) and Roger Marx (Lugt 2229); verso: Robert Hartshorne (Lugt 2215b) and National Gallery of Art (Lugt 1932d)

Watermarks

none

Wikidata ID

Q65081005


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