Mary Cassatt - In the Loge [c.1879]

Mary Cassatt - In the Loge [c.1879], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In this pastel drawing Cassatt enlivened the broad blended passages with brilliant touches of fresh pastel and bold streaks of metallic paint, frequently using moisture to create a multilayered surface. Through the years Cassatt produced pastels on a variety of supports, including paper, paper adhered to canvas, and canvas alone. For this work she used a canvas coated with a ground embedded with pumice or coarse fibres to create a rough surface that would hold the powdery pastels more securely.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Pastel and metallic paint on canvas prepared with a pastel ground, 65.1 x 81.3 cm]