Key facts
Young Girl at a Window holds a distinctive place in the work of Mary Cassatt, an American painter based in Paris and the only woman invited by Edgar Degas to exhibit with the Impressionists starting in 1879. Painted around 1883–1884, the canvas shows a young woman seated on a Parisian balcony, a dog on her lap, in a composition that blends portraiture with genre painting. Long exhibited under other titles, including Susan on a Balcony Holding a Dog, it reflects Cassatt’s close attention to the everyday details of women’s lives in her time. Held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, it comes from the former Corcoran Gallery of Art collection, transferred to the institution in 2014.
A woman Impressionist is already rare, but an American woman Impressionist is even rarer. I find this painting fully in the spirit of the movement: painted in natural light, caught on the fly, with the window open and Paris rooftops just visible in the background, in muted tones compared to the main scene. Mary Cassatt gives us a young girl lost in thought, dressed in the fashion of the era, a dog on her lap, the kind of everyday detail Impressionists loved to capture, rather than the grand historical or mythological scenes still favored by the official Salon. What strikes me every time I look at this canvas is the lightness of the brushwork: the delicate fabrics of the dress and veil catch the light with an almost trembling texture, built from small juxtaposed strokes rather than clean outlines. The girl’s gaze, turned aside, almost absent, gives the scene a quiet intimacy and melancholy that, to me, goes beyond a simple study of light. There’s a real psychological presence here, an inner life, which sets Cassatt apart from some of her contemporaries more focused on pure visual effect.
You’re standing in front of a fold of muslin trembling in the light, right at the edge of the hat. Look at that near-mauve white in places: this is where Mary Cassatt plays her finest note.
What Young Girl at a Window tells you
The young girl fills almost the entire frame, a dog curled on her lap. Her hat catches most of the light, in broad, loose strokes, while the face remains more built-up, almost academic. This contrast between quick virtuosity and careful attention to the face is typical of Cassatt’s manner in the early 1880s. In the background, the Paris rooftops dissolve into bluish flat tones, nearly abstract, so as never to compete with the figure.
What the era tells you
This canvas hasn’t always carried the title Young Girl at a Window. In 20th-century American exhibition catalogues, it was called Woman with a Dog, then, for over twenty years, Susan on a Balcony Holding a Dog. This shifting title tells a story specific to American art of the period: the Impressionist genre scene, set on a Parisian balcony, caught between direct observation and the social life of young American expatriates.
Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt settled in Paris in 1866. Degas noticed her and invited her, in 1877, to exhibit with the Impressionists. She took part in four of their exhibitions, in 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1886, the only American in the group.
News: a landmark Mary Cassatt retrospective at the Musée d’Orsay
A hundred years after her death, Mary Cassatt is the subject of an unprecedented tribute in France: from October 6, 2026 to January 31, 2027, the Musée d’Orsay is devoting its first major national retrospective to her, “Mary Cassatt. L’indépendante.” Organized with the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition brings together nearly 80 paintings, pastels, and prints, shedding light on the career of an American artist who became a central figure of Parisian Impressionism. It’s an opportunity to rediscover works like Young Girl at a Window, held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, within the broader context of the artist’s current recognition.
Source: Musée d’Orsay
A question for you
Where in this canvas does Cassatt’s brushwork stop being Impressionist and become almost academic again?
About this work
- Young Girl at a Window
- Mary Cassatt
- c. 1883–1884
- Oil on canvas
- 100.3 x 64.7 cm (39½ x 25½ in.)
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- https://www.nga.gov/artworks/97663-young-girl-window
Thank you for this lovely piece on Young Girl at a Window; your observation on the contrast between the loose, trembling brushwork of the hat and veil and the more carefully built face is especially insightful, and it makes the upcoming Musée d’Orsay retrospective even more exciting to look forward to.