The Letter

Mary Cassatt, 1890–1891

We look slightly down onto a young woman sitting at a writing desk as she licks an envelope in this vertical, color print. A table folds down or extends from a tall secretary desk to our right. The blotter on the table and the woman’s long dress are both royal blue. The dress has a vaguely floral pattern in the cream-white of the paper, and the jacket is open to reveal a vertically pleated, pale pink shirt beneath. The woman’s skin is also the color of the paper. Her black hair is pulled back over dark brows and a delicate nose. She holds the open flap of the envelope to her mouth with both hands. A piece of white paper lies on the desktop in front of her. She sits in a brown chair, and the wallpaper of the room is patterned with green leaves and muted pink flowers against a white background. The artist signed the work with her initials in graphite in the bottom left, “MC.”
Artist
Mary Cassatt
Date
1890–1891
Type
Print
Medium
color drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint
Dimensions
36.6 × 22.6 cm
Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Licence
Public domain, CC0

Image description

We look slightly down onto a young woman sitting at a writing desk as she licks an envelope in this vertical, color print. A table folds down or extends from a tall secretary desk to our right. The blotter on the table and the woman’s long dress are both royal blue. The dress has a vaguely floral pattern in the cream-white of the paper, and the jacket is open to reveal a vertically pleated, pale pink shirt beneath. The woman’s skin is also the color of the paper. Her black hair is pulled back over dark brows and a delicate nose. She holds the open flap of the envelope to her mouth with both hands. A piece of white paper lies on the desktop in front of her. She sits in a brown chair, and the wallpaper of the room is patterned with green leaves and muted pink flowers against a white background. The artist signed the work with her initials in graphite in the bottom left, “MC.”

Mary Cassatt