Simone in Blue Plumed Hat

Pale blue plumes rise around a small face, almost filling the upper half of the image. Below, a white garment spreads towards the lower corners in separate strokes. Between these large light shapes, Simone’s features form a compact centre of attention. The hat gives the portrait its most conspicuous outline, but the face keeps drawing the eye back inside it.

Sotheby’s catalogued Simone in Blue Plumed Hat as a pastel on paper executed about 1903. The entry for the Watson collection sale of 18 May 2005, lot 20, survives through Invaluable’s syndication of the auction catalogue. It gives dimensions of 52.7 × 45.1 centimetres without identifying them as sheet or sight measurements. ^[1]

The work’s interest lies partly in the way Cassatt makes its different areas unequal. The face receives concentrated modelling; the plumes expand through curving blue marks; the garment and background remain more openly drawn. These changes let a comparatively simple portrait contain several kinds of movement.

A plume larger than the head

The blue headwear is much taller and broader than the face it surrounds. Its outer contour rises in irregular rounded projections rather than following the close shape of the skull. The head appears nestled within an enlarged coloured enclosure.

The plume mass is not a flat patch of one blue. Pale accents curve across cooler and darker areas, suggesting overlapping parts. Their repeated changes of direction give the upper shape a soft, restless edge, even though it remains a recognisable whole from a distance.

Inside this larger silhouette, the hair makes a smaller opening around the forehead. The contrast of scale is crucial: the face can remain quite small because the hat establishes its position so emphatically. Colour and contour bring the viewer towards the head before the eyes and mouth become legible.

The upper shape also reaches farther to the left than the darkest background passage does to the right. The portrait therefore avoids an evenly spaced border around the sitter. The headwear changes the surrounding intervals, making the space at each side feel different.

The face within the blue

Warm pinks and pale flesh tones distinguish the face from the cooler plumes. Light brown hair adds another transition between skin and blue, particularly around the forehead and sides of the head. These smaller colour changes give the central opening a softer boundary than the hat’s outer edge.

The head turns slightly towards the viewer’s right. The eyes look in that general direction, while the mouth supplies a small warm accent below. The face is neither a strict profile nor an entirely frontal arrangement, so its unequal sides remain important to the likeness.

Close description is concentrated around the features. Darker touches at the eyes and changes across the cheeks establish a rounded head within a much larger field of freer marks. Looking from face to plume, one moves from small adjustments of tone to broad curves of colour.

An oblique glance can suggest that attention extends beyond the picture. It does not identify what Simone was watching or how she felt about posing. The visible direction is sufficient to give the portrait activity without an invented conversation or incident outside the frame.

The dark wedge at the right

A nearly black passage beside the hat creates the strongest contrast in the background. It is especially effective against the pale blue edge: the plumes seem lighter where they meet this dense area than where they meet the looser marks elsewhere.

The dark shape does not surround the figure uniformly. It is more concentrated at the upper right, while other parts of the field are broken by diagonals and visible paper. The resulting imbalance gives the upper composition weight on one side and more dispersed activity on the other.

Some background strokes travel in long, relatively straight directions. Their movement differs from the curves within the headwear. This contrast helps distinguish an object made of soft, overlapping forms from the less specifically described space behind it.

There is no need to turn that dark field into an identified wall, curtain or room. Its clearest role is pictorial: it strengthens a light contour, gives the head a setting and changes the balance of the sheet. The portrait supplies much more information about Simone’s appearance than about an exact interior.

White clothing and open paper

The garment broadens as it descends from the neck. Pale diagonal strokes suggest its volume without enclosing every edge. Its downward expansion answers the hat’s upward reach, giving the face large light shapes both above and below.

The two light areas behave differently. Blue plumes form a comparatively continuous upper mass, while the white clothing separates into marks through which the support can be seen. The body consequently has less visual density than the headwear, despite occupying a substantial part of the image.

Near the lower right, the signature sits within a comparatively open region. It is a small dark graphic presence beneath the larger background wedge. The surrounding gaps make it readable without requiring an equally dense account of the garment at that edge.

These changes of coverage make the pastel’s construction visible. A shoulder can emerge from a few adjoining strokes, while a cheek needs closer tonal adjustment. Open paper contributes to the arrangement rather than merely serving as a neutral space outside the figure.

What the pastel surface can tell us

The auction note itself distinguishes the more heavily worked face and plumes from the broad background strokes. That object-specific description agrees with the changing density visible in the reproduction. It does not amount to a conservation examination of the paper or pigments. ^[1]

The difference between concentrated modelling and separate drawn marks is useful to follow across the sheet. At a distance, the portrait reads as a coherent head and costume. Closer inspection reveals how much of that coherence depends on the viewer joining discontinuous lines and patches.

The open lower area does not establish that the pastel was abandoned or intended as preparation for another painting. Nor can a photograph provide a measured execution time. The visible effect is a hierarchy of description: the features are specific, the costume more broadly indicated and the setting least fully defined.

The present appearance of the exposed paper also leaves questions about its original colour unanswered. That material question is separate from observing how the support functions in the composition. Mary Cassatt’s drawings and pastels offer a wider context for this relationship between concentrated colour and openly drawn passages.

Simone as a recurring model

RISD curator Maureen C. O’Brien describes Cassatt making numerous studies of a little girl named Simone, often in different coloured bonnets. Her discussion concerns a separate oil painting in the RISD collection, but supports the broader context of a recurring named model. ^[15]

That repetition makes the headwear worth considering as part of the portrait’s structure. A different brim can change how much forehead remains visible, how far a silhouette reaches and whether the head seems enclosed by darkness or light. The model’s name provides continuity while the arrangement can vary substantially.

The name does not establish a family relationship to Cassatt or a precise age for this sitting. Neither is it necessary to invent ownership of the bonnet or a particular occasion on which it was worn. What this pastel makes available is the relationship among a particular face, a large plume and a changing surface.

The green bonnet with a wavy brim

The separately catalogued Head of Simone in a Green Bonnet with Wavy Brim appeared as lot 39 in the same 2005 Watson sale. Sotheby’s dated that pastel to about 1904 and explicitly described its measurements as sight dimensions. It is a distinct work with its own record. ^[16]

There, the dark blue-green brim dips beside one side of the head and rises to a sharper projection on the other. A dark neckband makes another enclosing curve below the chin. The head is held between these strongly defined upper and lower boundaries.

Here, pale plumes reach much higher, and the white garment extends across a larger portion of the lower image. The contrast is especially clear beneath the face: the green-bonnet portrait concentrates dark colour near the neck, while this pastel lets pale strokes spread towards the shoulders and torso.

Both pictures give headwear considerable compositional force, but their balance differs. One uses a low, dark, unequal wave; the other a tall, light mass against a concentrated dark background. Their approximate dates and shared model do not prove that they arose from one sitting or form a preparatory sequence.

Exhibition and catalogue history

The 2005 entry lists Hirschl & Adler Galleries in the provenance and records the pastel in the gallery’s November–December 1974 exhibition Quality: An Experience in Collecting, number 6, illustrated. This documents a historical exhibition association through the later auction catalogue. ^[1]

The same entry says the work had been intended for a supplement to Adelyn Dohme Breeskin’s 1970 catalogue raisonné and was to be included in a Cassatt Committee revision. That statement should retain its historical tense. It does not supply a published 1970 catalogue number or establish the later completion of a promised revision. ^[1]

The Watson consignment is likewise a historical collection record. It does not identify a current owner or public display location. The composition can be discussed in detail while acknowledging that its later ownership is not established by this catalogue entry.