Did Degas Love Mary Cassatt?

                                                        Edgar Degas: Mary Cassatt at the Louvre                1879

     This nice pastel paper is one of many studies, paintings, drawings, and etchings Degas made of his artist friend, Mary Cassatt. Degas and Cassatt were friends and constructive partners who inspired each other.

      They used to stroll through the Louvre to admire the old masters, but Degas always stayed behind a little bit to draw Mary from a perspective of a stolen moment. Sometimes Mary’s sister Lydia went with them with a guidebook. She is always sitting while Mary is always walking with her black umbrella in her hand or just leaning on it. Sometimes the paintings on the walls are visible but on this study there is nothing but Mary Cassatt and her black umbrella.

     It is very moving, how he depicted her, even if he did not show her face. Her fine, graceful silhouette in the dark coat with the light flounces reflects dignity. Her slightly turned head with the black hat and rose ribbon suggests a dreamy character that is lost in the beauty she finds on the walls. She stops before a painting and moons a little.

     I think Degas had a high opinion of Mary Cassatt, even loved her, who knows? Just look at the reddish scratch next to her right hand, which holds the umbrella. That explains everything. Her hand that paints such wonderful pictures, warm family moments in the way impressionists did; he basically marked her hand. The umbrella looks to me like a magic wand, like Mary Poppins’ umbrella. In any moment, she could take it and whisk into the air to create another wonderful artwork.

     Maybe these are just my own fantasies, that put things into the picture that are not there, or maybe they are.

     Mary and Degas later grew apart and found different paths, but their fate was the same: they both lost their sight and became almost blind later in their lives. But for Degas, when he created that picture, there was nothing else in the world, nothing in the Louvre, no other visitors, no old masters’ paintings on the walls, nothing. Only Mary.