Young Girl at a Window

Mary Cassatt

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a young woman wearing a white gown and bonnet sits in front of a balcony railing on a sunny day, holding a small dog on her lap in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is painted with visible brushstrokes, which are especially broad in the background and clothing. The woman sits with her body angled to our left, and she looks down in that direction with blue eyes. She has a short, snub nose, rosy cheeks, and her full, pink lips are parted. The woman’s bonnet is tied under her chin with a pale yellow bow. Her dress has a tightly-fitting bodice, elbow-length sleeves, and a long skirt. The bonnet and dress are painted with strokes of faint sky blue, petal pink, lavender purple, and mint green, with cream-white highlights and some darker cobalt-blue and apricot-peach strokes for shading. The dog on her lap lies with its head to our left, lifted as it looks out onto the landscape. The tan glove the woman wears on the arm we can see reaches her elbow, and she rests that hand on the dog’s back. Her right arm, to our left, is hidden below the elbow by the dog. The animal has charcoal-gray fur along its back and tan fur on the legs and shaggy face. The woman sits in a wicker armchair with a crimson-red medallion next to her left shoulder, to our right. The black balcony railing spans the width of the painting at the level of her nose, and has vertical bars. In the landscape beyond, trees to the right are painted loosely with sage green and mustard yellow. Buildings in the distance fill the top quarter of the composition, and are loosely painted with strokes of slate and aquamarine blue. The sky above is streaked with pale blush pink and ice blue. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Mary Cassatt.”