About this work
A woman in a white dress sits absorbed in *Le Figaro*, the great Parisian daily, its broadsheet pages spread open before her.
She wears round spectacles perched on her nose, her expression focused — entirely elsewhere, indifferent to being observed. The palette is warm and muted: browns, whites, and creams dominate the scene, with light falling on the sitter's face and hands and the white plane of the newspaper itself, pulling the eye exactly where Cassatt wants it. A mirror at the right is a nod to traditional portraitists who frequently used the device to show another side of the subject, but here Cassatt chooses not to do that — reflecting only the newspaper back at the viewer, emphasising its importance in revealing her mother's character. Nothing in the composition is accidental: the cropped armchair, the shallow interior, the sitter's complete self-containment — all of it conspires to make the act of reading feel like a statement of selfhood.
*Reading Le Figaro* was one of three accomplished works Cassatt completed in 1878 — alongside a self-portrait and *Little Girl in a Blue Armchair* — and it is a portrait of her own mother, Katherine Cassatt.
It came at a pivotal moment, just as Cassatt's artistry was reaching full fruition but before she fully embraced Impressionism — she was still submitting to the Salon each year, growing increasingly disillusioned with how steeply the system was rigged against women and outsiders.
The choice of newspaper — one usually read by men in this period — signals her intention to show her mother not as a conventional female figure but as someone with advanced views on what women should concern themselves with.
The painting emphasises the sitter's engagement in reading as an intellectual pursuit, specifically a newspaper, an activity considered at the time primarily the province of men.
Katherine Cassatt believed in educating women to be knowledgeable and socially active — and her daughter painted her accordingly, with full dignity and without sentimentality.
This is a painting for rooms that are lived in rather than curated — a study, a reading nook, a bedroom wall where light arrives softly in the morning. Its intimacy rewards close proximity; the warm neutrals of cream, ivory, and brown settle quietly into natural linen, aged wood, and layered textiles. *Reading Le Figaro* is a portrait, but not merely a portrait — it is a scene of modern life depicting the bourgeois morning ritual of reading the newspaper, with a twist. The viewer it speaks to is someone who notices restraint, who finds meaning in what a painting doesn't do. The mood it sets is one of quiet authority — a reminder that concentration is its own kind of grace.
