Portrait of a Lady

Mary Cassatt

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the lap up, an older woman with pale, slightly sagging skin and frosty gray hair sits facing us in this loosely painted vertical portrait. Her body is angled very slightly to our right, and she rests one elbow across the back of the chair in which she sits. She has a round face with large, dark blue eyes, and she smiles. Her gray hair is pulled back under a black hat, which is topped with pale pink flowers. She wears a black coat over a high-necked, hunter-green garment and nickel-gray gloves. The chair is painted loosely with a red and green floral pattern against a white background, and the space behind the woman is parchment white.