Brief Report
This charming portrait of little Sara, the granddaughter of Emile Loubets, a former president of the French Republic, is one of more than 50 drawn or painted studies that Mary Cassatt made of the girl within the space of a year. It is most similar to a pastel now in the Fred Jones Museum in Norman, Oklahoma [Breeskin 1970, entry 369].

In the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud it is very much a special case, which only became apparent as a result of closer technical examination. For the painting, on a grey-primed canvas which Cassatt bought from the Paris dealer Dupré, as can be seen from two markings verso on the fabric and stretcher respectively, is in a curious condition (figs. 4, 5). There are traces of scraping by a trowel or palette knife and drips and run-marks of a liquid, indicating that the paint-layer was subjected to rough treatment over the whole area of the picture before it was completely dry. (figs. 7-12). The time and manner of this treatment mean that the only possible culprit is the artist herself. In many places the paint was removed down to the ground, while the surface of the paint layer shows signs of rubbing, in fact looks as though it has been washed down, so that the present condition can only be described as fragmentary.

This form of revision suggests a critical confrontation with her work on the part of the artist, and that she reduced the paint layer in order to re-work the picture once more. For reasons unknown, this was never done, however. The reason for Cassatt’s dissatisfaction is not apparent today: while the figure of the girl was evidently well advanced, peripheral areas have been left sketchy and unworked (fig. 6). In Cassatt‘s œuvre dating from 1890 to about 1903 there are other individual paintings which, to judge from illustrations, appear to be in a similar condition [Breeskin 1970, entries 183, 263, 388, 405, 436, 507].

Mary Cassatt
Sara with a Dark Bonnet, 1901, oil on canvas, 67.2 x 56.2 cm, WRM. Dep. FC 697

Mary Cassatt

born on 22 May 1845 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
died on 14 June 1926 in Le Mesnil-Théribus (Oise)

Brief report with complete data as downloadable pdf-file

Further illustrations:

Fig. 02

Verso


Fig. 03

UV fluorescence


Fig. 04

Verso; the dealer’s stamps on the stretcher and the canvas; for comparison, the cover title of Dupré’s near-contemporary catalogue (1899)


Fig. 05

Grey ground, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 06

Detail of the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, sketchy painting


Fig. 07

Detail in raking light: trace of scraping by a palette knife; paint was removed before it had had time to dry


Fig. 08

Traces of scraping; the tool, a trowel or palette knife, was drawn from bottom to top (arrows); microscopic photograph
in raking light (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 09

Detail of flesh colour


Fig. 10

Detail of the arm: incident light


Fig. 11

Detail of the arm; the transmitted light shows the highly variable thickness of the picture layer resulting from the
treatment the painting received; thus the areas thinned by the solvent right down to the ground appears pale yellow


Fig. 12

Blue and white paint applications mixed wet-in-wet; the trail of drips shows the use of solvent to reduce the thickness of the paint layers; microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)