Margot in Blue

Cassatt painted this work in 1902, at the height of her mature Impressionist practice, when she had long established herself as the foremost American painter working within the Paris circle of Degas, Monet, and Renoir. The sitter is Margot Lux, one of several children of middle-class French families whom Cassatt returned to repeatedly during these years, finding in their unguarded poses an antidote to the stiff formality of academic child portraiture. By this point Cassatt had refined her approach to childhood subjects into something entirely her own: where Impressionism typically dissolved figures into atmosphere, she preserved the weight and particularity of the child's presence, grounding the loose brushwork in a sure sense of character. The painting entered the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where it has remained one of the most admired examples of her late figure work. It exemplifies her ability to honour the full interiority of a child rather than reducing the subject to decorative charm.