Around 1900, Mary Cassatt added a new type of composition to her repertory: the young girl seated alone or with a dog. Many of the girls, as in Margot in a Bonnet, wear elaborate chapeaux. Inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish portraits as well as English portraits of the Romantic period, Cassatt updated the genre. While the old master images depicted aristocratic children, Cassatt often drew her models from the families of local servants. Nevertheless, she instilled her sitters with a strong sense of presence and dignity, in keeping with her belief that education and cooperation among women could shape destiny as much as inherited position.



This work will be included in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the works of Mary Cassatt in the section dealing with the artist's pastel counterproofs.

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