Smiling Sara in a Big Hat Holding Her Dog by Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt
1844–1926 | American

Smiling Sara in a Big Hat Holding Her Dog

Signed "Mary Cassatt" (lower right)
Pastel on paper

“I love to paint children. They are so natural and truthful. They have no arrière-pensée [ulterior motive].” – Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt is distinguished as one of the most important female painters in art history, as one of the few women and the only American to exhibit with the Impressionists. More than any of her contemporaries, she elevated the world of women into subjects of profound significance. This magnificent pastel, Smiling Sara in a Big Hat Holding Her Dog, showcases Cassatt's signature subject and her exceptional mastery of the medium.

By 1906, at the peak of her fame, Mary Cassatt began frequently employing Sara, a young golden-haired girl who was quite likely the granddaughter of former French president Emile Loubet. Sara's sweet face and good-natured demeanor made her a favored model who appeared in many of Cassatt's works, including Sara in a Green Bonnet at the Smithsonian of American Art Museum and a drawing titled Sara Wearing Her Bonnet and Coat at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In this work, Sara and her loyal companion are rendered in a lovely range of rosy pinks, warm yellows and brilliant blues. Cassatt's virtuosic linework adds dynamic energy to certain parts of the composition and lush softness to others, especially Sara's face and hair. Radiating a charming vivacity and intimate warmth, this work embodies Cassatt's understanding of childhood innocence and her belief in the compelling individualism of women and girls.

Cassatt’s pastel work, inspired by her friend Edgar Degas, allowed her to layer color rapidly while capturing the fleeting nuances of expression. “I saw art then as I wanted to see it,” she once recalled after encountering Degas’s pastels in a Paris shop window. From the 1890s onward, pastel became her dominant medium, and by the early 20th century, she had fully harnessed its potential for expressiveness and luminosity. Pastel would ultimately emerge as the medium for which she achieved her greatest fame.

Born in 1844 near Pittsburgh, Mary Cassatt spent most of her life in France. She is likely the most important person in exposing the Impressionist movement to the Americas. Cassatt exhibited at the Salon and was invited by Edgar Degas in 1877 to join the Impressionist exhibitions, participating in 1879–81 and 1886 as the lone American in the group. Today, Cassatt remains one of the most towering female figures in art history, and her works are highly coveted by prestigious institutions and collectors. Major retrospective exhibitions of her work, both oil paintings and works on paper alike, have been held at the Musée d’Orsay, and the major 2024-25 exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Mary Cassatt at Work. Importantly, a counter-proof of our pastel is part of the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

This work is included as no. 447 in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the works of Mary Cassatt.

Circa 1906-07

Paper: 21 1/4" high x 16" wide (56.52 x 40.64 cm)
Frame: 34 5/8" high x 26 3/8" wide x 2 3/4" deep (87.95 x 66.99 x 6.99 cm)

Provenance:
(probably) Ambrose Vollard, Paris
Raoul Bouchara, Paris (acquired circa 1935)
Acquired by descent from the above
Private collection, United States

Literature:
Daniel Catton Rich, Catalogue of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawing, Chicago, 1938, p. 56
Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1970, no. 373, p. 156, illustrated
Exhibition catalog, Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, 1998, p. 226