MARY CASSATT | Portrait of Agnès, Age Six

The artist
Baron Octave de Sailly, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France (the sitter's father, acquired from the above)
Private collection, Paris, by 1959 (by descent)
By descent to the present owner 

Paris, France, Centre Culturel Américain, Mary Cassatt peintre et graveur, 1844-1926, November 1959–January 1960, no. IV, n.p. (as Portrait d'une petite fille)

Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1970, no. 584, p. 210, illustrated

The canvas is unlined and there is frame abrasion along the extreme edges with associated spots of loss. There appears to be minor paint separation in the figure's bow at the upper left. The work may be slightly dirty. Under UV: there is no apparent inpainting.
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Agnès de Sailly posed for Mary Cassatt twice, first in 1907 and again in October 1910 for the present work and the related preparatory study. Agnès was the daughter of Baron Octave de Sailly, who was Cassatt’s close friend and personal lawyer. The family lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, and also owned a château in Pouilly, near the artist’s château in Beaufresne. Cassatt’s biographer, Frederick Sweet, described the de Sailly children’s experience sitting for the artist: “They recall that, when she [Cassatt] came to call on their parents, she insisted upon remaining in her car, which meant that they all had to stand around, but they were so fascinated by her personality that they did not mind. Posing for Mary Cassatt, they said, was fun as she kept them amused with books and toys, but they were driven to distraction by her Belgian griffons nipping at their ankles” (Frederick A. Sweet, Miss Mary Cassatt: Impressionist from Pennsylvania, Norman, Oklahoma, 1966, p. 148).

In a letter to her friend Louisine Havemeyer dated October 24, 1910, Cassatt discussed her progress on the present work: “I am just finishing a little portrait [of] my neighbor's little girl, he already has one in pastels of her (Portrait of Agnès and a Dog) and another with her mother & little brother (Portrait of Madame O. de S. and Her Children). He does so love this child who is very pretty & a nice child and begged me to paint her this time. If all sitters were like her it would not be hard” (Mary Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer, Mesnil-Théribus, France, October 24, 1910, quoted in Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1970, p. 210).

This work is included as no. 618 in the Cassatt Committee's revision of Adelyn Dohme Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the works of Mary Cassatt.