by Vanessa Schmitz-Grucker
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Étude pour la tasse de thé (Study For a Cup of Tea) or L’Heure du thé (Tea Time), c. 1879-1881, oil on paper mounted on canvas, signed with initials in the lower middle, numbered on the back 692 and marked PH 77, 39.5 x 60 cm/15.6 x 23.6 in.
While her works with a palette considered too bright were rejected by the Paris Salon, in 1879, Degas invited Mary Cassatt to participate in the fourth "Exhibition of Impressionist Painters". There she exhibited her Lydia dans une loge, portant un collier de perles (Lydia in a Dressing Room, Wearing a Pearl Necklace ) ( Philadelphia MBA ). Lydia, her sister, had just moved to Paris, already cognizant of her liver disease. During the years over which this study was created, Mary’s older sister came to be at the heart of her work. It is Lydia’s profile that is sketched in this study...
