Under the Lamp
c. 1882
Medium
Soft ground etching and aquatint with scraping in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 19.2 × 21.8 cm (7 9/16 × 8 5/8 in.); Sheet: 23.7 × 32.1 cm (9 3/8 × 12 11/16 in.)
Classification
aquatint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
26693
Art Historical Context
Mary Cassatt's *Under the Lamp* (c. 1882) captures the intimate glow of domestic life, a hallmark of her Impressionist sensibility. As an American expatri in Paris and a close associate of Edgar Degas, Cassatt was one of the few women embraced by the Impressionist circle. She often depicted women and children in everyday moments, infusing her works with tenderness and modernity. This print, housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints Drawings department, exemplifies her with light and shadow during her innovative printmaking phase in the early 1880s. Crafted as a soft ground etching and a...
About the Artist
Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Born to a wealthy Pennsylvania family, she defied social conventions to pursue art professionally, settling permanently in Paris where Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist group in 1877. Her paintings of mothers and children—rendered with Impre...