Degas and Cassatt

Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas shared an interest in the human figure, contemporary life and the possibilities of making images through several media. Their professional relationship included advice, printmaking experiments, portraits, exchanges of artwork and support for each other’s careers. The most revealing evidence lies in those particular activities, rather than in a single permanent description of one as teacher and the other as pupil.

Degas invited Cassatt to exhibit with the independent Impressionists in 1877. She made her debut with the group in 1879. The National Gallery of Art’s Degas/Cassatt exhibition account distinguishes that invitation from the later public appearance and traces a friendship that continued, despite changes in their working relationship, until Degas’s death in 1917. ^[1]

A painting with a revised corner, a theatre print in different states, a Louvre scene and two exchanged works provide concrete ways to follow the relationship. Each shows something different: another artist’s probable intervention, shared technical enquiry, representation of a colleague, or the commitment expressed through ownership.

An invitation to an independent exhibition

The invitation of 1877 offered Cassatt a different public context from the Salon jury. It did not introduce her to professional art from the beginning. By then she had already trained and exhibited, and the decision to join the independent group belonged to an artist making choices about where her work should be seen. The biography follows that earlier development in more detail. ^[1]

Achille Ségard’s 1913 French account reports Cassatt remembering the invitation as a welcome opportunity to work without worrying about a jury’s judgement. This is a later reported recollection, not a transcript written at the moment of the invitation. Its value is in the professional independence being remembered; its surrounding chronology should not override more securely established exhibition dates. ^[10]

The distinction between invitation and debut matters. A two-year interval separates Degas’s approach from Cassatt’s first appearance with the group. Collapsing them would turn a developing professional decision into a single instant. Likewise, the relationship cannot be explained solely through a story of recognition in which Degas supplies all the initiative and Cassatt only receives it.

Independent exhibiting also involved a network larger than two people. Printmakers and painters worked alongside one another, exchanged methods and tested different forms of presentation. Cassatt’s relationship with Degas was important within that network, but it did not contain every source of her technique or every aspect of her subsequent work.

A corner in Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair provides a specific example of probable collaboration. The National Gallery dates the oil to 1878 and states that Degas probably worked on the rear corner of its setting. That qualification is essential: it identifies a particular area and a degree of certainty, rather than dividing the whole painting into unsupported percentages of authorship. ^[5]

The 2014 brochure describes evidence from magnification and infrared examination, together with a letter tradition. An earlier horizontal floor-wall boundary became a corner, the couch was reworked to fit the altered space, and a trial position for the dog on the floor was abandoned in favour of its place on a chair. These changes explain how the room’s final arrangement emerged through revision. ^[1]

Changing a corner is a consequential intervention. A straight back wall would hold the setting more nearly parallel to the canvas. A meeting of two walls introduces another direction and changes how the furniture relates to the room. The adjustment matters to the child’s surroundings even though it does not alter the subject into a different kind of scene.

The distinction between evidence and attribution remains important. Imaging can reveal a prior arrangement; paint handling and documentary information help build an argument about who contributed to it. Neither is equivalent to a chemical test that identifies Degas’s hand. Cassatt’s later account of his involvement is transmitted through the museum publication here, rather than newly verified from the original French autograph. ^[1]

The work’s possible appearance in the 1879 exhibition is also retained as a possibility in the current object history. A relationship story should not make that exhibition entry certain simply because it would produce a convenient sequence. The painting already provides substantial evidence of exchange without requiring every historical detail to become definite. ^[5]

The print journal that never appeared

In 1879–80, Cassatt and Degas worked with other artists towards Le Jour et la nuit, a proposed journal of original prints. Félix Bracquemond and Camille Pissarro were among the participants. Although the publication never appeared, the work associated with it encouraged technical experiment. The National Gallery’s account places Degas in a teaching role for particular printmaking methods during this period. ^[1]

That specific instruction should not become a description of Cassatt’s entire artistic life. Learning a process from a colleague is compatible with developing independent solutions within it. A failed publication can also have a productive history: the proposed journal did not need to reach readers for the participating artists to gain experience through preparing and revising prints.

Softground etching was especially relevant because it could preserve effects resembling drawing. A prepared drawing could be traced over a yielding ground on a plate, allowing selected lines to be developed through etching. Other methods then supplied different kinds of line and tone. The National Gallery explains these processes through surviving works rather than treating all of Cassatt’s prints as one uniform technique. ^[11]

The collaborative activity thus included discussion, instruction and comparison of results. It need not mean that every participant physically worked on every plate. Specifying the method and the object gives the word collaboration a useful meaning while preserving Cassatt’s authorship of her own compositions.

An opera-box drawing and two impressions

In the Opera Box (No. 3) offers an exact sequence to examine. The National Gallery’s preparatory recto, accession 1946.21.82.a, is an 1880 graphite drawing on wove paper. The seated woman holds a broad fan, with curved theatre divisions behind her. ^[6]

Two separate prints show different stages. Accession 1946.21.81 is catalogued as a second state of four, in softground etching and aquatint on laid paper. Accession 1946.21.80 is a fourth and final state on Japanese paper. Those catalogue labels identify the selected impressions; they should not be replaced by the state number attached to another museum’s sheet in an exhibition brochure. ^{[7] [8]}

The drawing faces in the opposite direction from the printed figure. That reversal is a useful reminder that transferring a design and printing an impression alter orientation. The print is not simply the drawing reproduced in another colour. It has its own worked surface, ink and paper, and can develop different visual relationships.

Comparing the selected impressions, the face is heavily shadowed in the earlier state and lighter in the final one. Darker surrounding areas in the later image give the head and shoulders a different relationship to the seat and theatre background. The fan remains a strong curved shape across the lower figure, but the balance of light and dark shifts around it.

The sequence makes artistic choice visible. A recognisable figure can remain while the effect of her surroundings changes substantially. Cassatt’s engagement with printmaking concerned such decisions, rather than merely mastering a process supplied by Degas. Looking at the actual sheets gives that professional development a material basis.

It also prevents a misleading hierarchy in which a preparation is interesting only because it leads towards something more complete. The graphite drawing preserves a particular distribution of marks and a view of the figure before printing. Each impression records another physical result. Their differences are the evidence, not imperfections to be ignored while searching for one ideal image.

Cassatt as a museum visitor in Degas’s art

Degas represented Cassatt in several works connected with the Louvre. One exact example is the Metropolitan Museum’s Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, dated 1879–80, accession 19.29.2. It combines softground etching, aquatint, etching and drypoint, and is catalogued as the third of nine states. ^[9]

The standing figure is seen from behind, leaning against an umbrella, while a companion sits at the left holding an open book. Display divisions and exhibited objects create a grid around them. The standing body interrupts that structure with a different set of curves and angles. The image presents looking at art as a bodily activity within an organised public setting.

The two figures also establish different relationships with the exhibits. One stands facing into the gallery; the other holds a book and turns across the space. Their poses give the museum scene more than one direction of attention. Cassatt is represented as an active visitor rather than as a face offered directly to the portrait viewer.

The Metropolitan Museum names the seated companion as Lydia, while the 2014 National Gallery brochure treats that identification as possible. The difference should remain visible: Lydia is the museum’s identification, with uncertainty preserved across the sources. Neither the print nor the title establishes the date of an actual recorded outing. ^{[9] [1]}

The print’s own state matters as well. A third state is not the final state illustrated elsewhere, and a later pastel or oil of a related Louvre subject is a separate object. The series demonstrates sustained interest, but the precise order of every related drawing, print and painting is not fully established in the reviewed account. ^[1]

The exchange of Girl Arranging Her Hair

A different kind of reciprocity appears in an exchange after the 1886 Impressionist exhibition. Cassatt’s oil Girl Arranging Her Hair, now at the National Gallery, entered Degas’s collection; she received his Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub. The current owning museum accounts and Susan Alyson Stein’s Havemeyer chronology identify the exchange. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

The paired works are materially and visually distinct. Cassatt’s 1886 oil shows an upright young figure with a raised arm and a long braid. Pale clothing, patterned walls and objects on a washstand organise the interior around the body. The gesture opens the arm above the head while another hand meets the hair lower down. ^[2]

Degas’s 1885 work is charcoal and pastel. Its figure bends deeply over a shallow tub, bringing the curved back into a compact relation with head, arms and legs. The Metropolitan Museum records its support as formerly light-green wove paper, now warm grey, laid on silk bolting. That material history belongs to this exact sheet, rather than supplying an original paper colour for Cassatt’s pastels generally. ^[3]

The contrast makes the exchange more interesting than a claim that the artists produced equivalent bathing pictures. One composition extends through an upright body and vertical braid; the other folds a body closely around a low basin. Their ownership of each other’s work shows engagement across those differences. The original receipt or exchange letter has not been inspected here, so the transaction is presented through the museum and scholarly accounts.

Later collecting creates another chapter. Stein records Louisine Havemeyer’s acquisition of Girl Arranging Her Hair from the Degas collection sale in March 1918. Her chronology also separates Cassatt’s offer of Degas works, wartime storage in 1918–19 and their arrival in New York in June 1919. An 1886 exchange, a later sale and a delayed shipment are different events in the lives of the pictures. ^[4]

Owning, recommending and securing delivery

The National Gallery’s 2014 account describes Degas owning nearly one hundred Cassatt works, chiefly prints, and Cassatt owning at least six works by Degas. Those are the publication’s dated assessments. Its discussion of his multiple impressions of The Visitor shows an interest in her process as well as her subjects; an old sale catalogue’s count of states should not automatically become a current catalogue count. ^[1]

Possessing several stages of a print gives a collector access to change. A revised area can be compared across sheets, allowing the work’s development to remain visible after the plate has moved on. That makes Degas’s collection relevant to the technical relationship, without proving exactly when Cassatt sent every impression or what either said on receiving it.

Cassatt’s advocacy also involved practical negotiation. Stein’s chronology describes the Havemeyers’ 1891 purchase of Degas’s The Collector of Prints, followed by Cassatt’s effort in 1894 to secure its release. Purchase, further work by the artist and delivery did not occur simultaneously. The picture was shipped later in 1894 and arrived in New York in February 1895, according to that account. ^[4]

The episode shows why collecting was more than a general enthusiasm for another artist. It could involve accompanying buyers, communicating with dealers and helping move a work from studio to collection. Cassatt’s role in those relationships gave her agency beyond the position of an artist whose own work Degas admired.

Asking the public to compare

Louisine Havemeyer’s printed speech of 6 April 1915 supplies another example of Cassatt’s advocacy. Havemeyer reports asking her advice about the exhibition and receiving a proposal to hang a Vermeer near Degas so that visitors could compare them. She then tells her audience that a borrowed Vermeer made the arrangement possible. The conversation is reported by Havemeyer, rather than preserved as a letter written by Cassatt. ^[12]

The proposal places judgement with the viewer. It invites an audience to consider a modern artist beside an older master, using actual works as the basis for comparison. Cassatt’s contribution is curatorial as well as conversational: the position of one picture relative to another becomes a way of making an argument without reducing it to a descriptive slogan.

The passage does not establish an exact illustrated pair here. Havemeyer discusses several everyday subjects in explaining Vermeer, and those examples should not automatically be identified as the single borrowed canvas. The secure point is the comparative proposal and her account of carrying it out. It demonstrates Cassatt’s active role in shaping how Degas could be seen by an American audience, rather than treating his reputation as something she only observed.

A critic revises the pupil label

Contemporary criticism provides another perspective. In his 1880 exhibition review, Joris-Karl Huysmans described Cassatt in relation to Degas as a pupil. The following year he revisited that judgement and praised her independence. Those reviews are consulted here in the 1902 reprint L’Art moderne: the writing concerns the earlier exhibitions, not an assessment first made in 1902. ^[13]

The change is evidence of a critic reconsidering what he saw. It does not establish formal lifelong pupilship in 1880 or prove an absence of exchange in 1881. The language of independence and influence belongs to an argument made by a reviewer, with assumptions about gender and artistic authority that should not be adopted as neutral facts.

That distinction offers a useful way to read the relationship more generally. A description can illuminate one activity and distort another when applied universally. Degas could teach a printmaking method, collect Cassatt’s work and depict her as a museum visitor. Cassatt could learn, experiment, exchange an important painting and promote his art. These roles coexist without collapsing into one permanent hierarchy.

Different directions after 1886

The final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 marked a change rather than a complete end to the relationship. The National Gallery’s account describes less frequent interaction as the artists’ work developed in different directions. It also reports Degas attending a Cassatt exhibition in Paris in 1914. ^[1]

Later colour work demonstrates why their practices should not remain fixed in the pattern of the proposed black-and-white journal. Cassatt developed colour intaglio, with separate plates and carefully coordinated printing, while Degas explored other processes and subjects. The prints and paintings make those distinct developments visible without requiring every later decision to be explained through the other artist. ^[11]

The relationship is strongest as a history of particular exchanges. Its surviving evidence includes methods taught, compositions revised, images made of a colleague and works chosen for private ownership. Examining each on its own terms gives a fuller account of Cassatt’s independence and of the substantial place Degas held within her professional life.