Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Cup of Tea
- Artist
- Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
- Date
- 1880–1881
- Dimensions
- 92.4 x 65.4 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
The Cup of Tea shows a young woman in a pink dress seated in a striped armchair, holding a cup and saucer in her gloved hands. Behind her, a large green potted plant with pink flowers fills the corner of the room.
A closer look
The model is Lydia, the painter's elder sister, who lived with Cassatt in Paris and often posed for her. Taking afternoon tea was an important ritual of upper-middle-class women's social life, and Cassatt painted it from the inside, as a woman who knew it well. The pinks of the dress, the chair and the flowers are painted with quick, broken strokes in the Impressionist manner, and the light from an unseen window gives the face a soft glow. The picture was shown at the Impressionist exhibition of 1881, where it was praised by critics.
More by Mary Cassatt
In this gallery
Breakfast in Bed
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
The Child’s Bath
Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge
Young Mother Sewing
Famous works elsewhere
- The Boating Party 1893