The visual description on the museum’s object page for this work reads, in part: “Two women with pale, peachy skin sit next to a table holding a silver tray and royal-blue tea cups and saucers in this colored, vertical etching and aquatint. Faint black lines outline the women, their features, clothing, and objects in the room, and each area is filled in a flat color. The women face each other and take up most of the composition. Both have oval faces, rounded noses, pale pink lips, and their hair is pulled up and back. The woman to our right has brown hair and leans forward as she holds up a blue plate with her right hand, closer to us. The other hand rests on the arm of her tawny-brown chair. Her dress has a petal pink bodice and long skirt with fog-white long sleeves and white fabric covering her chest and tucked into the low, rounded neckline. The other woman wears a blue cap over black hair. The hat has a celery-green feather and is tied in a bow under the chin. She wears a hip-length, charcoal-gray cloak over a pale, sage-green dress. She looks down at the plate and holds what might be a cookie or biscuit with one hand and a cup and a dish-like saucer with the other. ... She sits upright in another brown chair. In the lower right corner of the sheet, the round gray table is barely bigger than the round gray tray it holds. On it are two more cups and saucers and a silver jug, presumably holding milk. … The artist signed and inscribed the sheet under the lower right corner, ‘Imprimée par l'artiste et M. Leroy, Mary Cassatt (25 épreuves).’ A tiny dark blue stamp with a short, wide C overlaid on a capital letter M is inked along the bottom edge of the image.”
Afternoon #Tea Party, 1890-91, by #MaryCassatt (American, 1844-1926). Held by the National Gallery of Art, www.nga.gov/artworks/333...
Thru Aug 30, the museum is hosting the show “Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris,” www.nga.gov/exhibitions/...
#artherstory #womenartists #NationalTeaDay
