Little Girl In A Blue Armchair Mary Cassatte

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Little Girl in a Blue Armchair was painted in 1878 by Mary Cassatt, an American impressionist. The title tells all; it depicts a young girl sprawled all over a large, cerulean blue armchair. Her legs are spread. Her arm is out. Her one hand rests behind her head. On her stomach lies a plaid blanket. The little girl looks sluggish – immovable – yet still very comfortable. A sleeping puppy sits on the armchair to her right. Two other armchairs are found in separate corners of the room. In this vibrant oil painting, Cassatt rests its beauty not on its subject – the little girl – but on her technique. In doing so, she subverts preconceptions of how the female gaze should take shape in a work of art. There is nothing inherently pretty about the …show more content…

Many viewers from Cassatt’s time would expect that not only is she painting an everyday scene (as did many other impressionists), but that she is also painting from her experience – the female artist as mother. However, the gaze Cassatt casts on her subject is not nurturing, as a result of her color and compositional choices. Instead, her lens is cold, frank and straight to the point. Cassatt’s Little Girl lives on to explicitly oppose her era’s principles on how a female artist sees and treats their subject. If this piece were painted by a male, with his gaze, it would be completely different – more idyllic. How does he interpret what she sees? The child would be curled up with a smile on her face and the dog in her arms. He would illuminate the child through bright, warm colors. He would emphasize the domesticity of the moment. But Cassatt throws those images away and provides the viewer with her fresh take on a familiar scene. She renders the slack little girl with lots of blue, taking away from the painting’s potential homeliness, but makes up for it with her skill and talent. By projecting her gaze onto the subject, Cassatt articulates and asserts her own ideology: images of domesticity, the woman’s maternal role and beauty are not interdependent. Little Girl shows the viewer just how. The

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