The Loge
Mary Cassatt·1882
Historical Context
The Loge (1882, National Gallery of Art) revisits the opera box theme of her celebrated 1878 work In the Loge, but with a more decorative, mature handling. By 1882 Cassatt was an established member of the Impressionist circle, having participated in their exhibitions since 1879. The two women in the box, one shown in profile, embody the fashionable leisure spaces of Haussmann's Paris that the Impressionists documented so thoroughly. The theatre and concert hall were among the few public spaces where middle-class women could appear unescorted, making them charged social arenas that Cassatt returned to repeatedly.
Technical Analysis
The two-figure composition is bathed in the warm artificial light of the theatre, with Cassatt rendering the women's elaborate dress and coiffure in rich, close-valued tones. Her brushwork is fluid and assured, with the mirror or background dissolving into impressionistic suggestion behind the sharply observed foreground figures.
