The Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey recently acquired a masterful impressionist painting by celebrated artist Mary Cassatt. Little Girl in a Large Red Hat—a portrait painted around 1881 at the early peak of Cassatt’s career—features a young girl in a red hat, a work distinguished by its painterly characterization.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Little Girl in a Large Red Hat, ca. 1881. Oil on canvas, 171/5 x 151/5 in. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund.
“A work such as this one, which comes from the final years when the artist was exhibiting with the impressionists in Paris, not only tells us so much about process and technique, but also allows us to engage with important questions about how a woman artist made her way in the patriarchal art world of the time,” says James Steward, the museum’s Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “This extraordinary painting will be able to move fluidly among galleries devoted to European or American art as part of the new museum we are in the process of shaping.”
Little Girl in a Large Red Hat was thought to have been painted in Paris or close by, with Cassatt having spent summers there in the early 1880s. As a fervent supporter of women’s rights, Cassatt’s portrait demonstrates the idea of an individual girl’s depth, agency and potential, the museum notes. This work is the first painting by the artist to enter the Princeton University Art Museum’s collection, which include a pastel and 10 drawings and prints by Cassatt. —
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