Girl with a Banjo - Mary Cassatt
Archival giclée
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Description
A delicate pastel study by Mary Cassatt, capturing a young girl in a moment of quiet musical focus through expressive, layered colour.
Mary Cassatt, an American painter who spent much of her career in France, produced this study of a young girl playing a banjo during the 1890s. The work demonstrates her mastery of pastel, a medium she favoured for its immediacy and the soft, luminous quality it imparted to her subjects. The composition focuses on the girl, whose posture is relaxed as she engages with the instrument. Her gaze is directed downward, creating a sense of quiet concentration that is characteristic of Cassatt's domestic scenes.
The background is composed of energetic, hatched strokes of colour that suggest a sense of movement and atmosphere rather than a defined space. Cassatt uses a palette of warm ochres, deep reds, and blues to frame the figure. The application of the pastel is visible, with layers of pigment building up the form of the girl and the circular body of the banjo. By avoiding rigid outlines, she allows the colours to interact directly, giving the image a sense of spontaneity.
Cassatt was closely associated with the French Impressionists, particularly Edgar Degas, who encouraged her interest in printmaking and pastel. Like her contemporaries, she sought to capture fleeting moments of everyday life. This piece reflects her interest in the private lives of women and children, a subject she explored throughout her career. The lack of excessive detail allows the viewer to focus on the gesture and the mood of the sitter. The work remains a fine example of her ability to balance technical precision with a loose, expressive application of colour, resulting in a portrait that feels both intimate and immediate.
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Because every print is made to order, we don't offer change-of-mind returns, refunds or exchanges. If your order arrives faulty, damaged or incorrect, we'll replace it free of charge — just contact us within 48 hours of delivery. See our refunds page for full details.
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Manufacturing
Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
- Framed prints arrive ready to hang
Care & Cleaning
To keep your artwork looking its best:
- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
- Handle prints with clean, dry hands
Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Girl with a Banjo - Mary Cassatt
Artist Biography
Mary Cassatt
She grew up in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), in a prosperous family. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she found the instruction restrictive and the male students hostile. She moved to Paris in 1866, copied old masters in the Louvre, and studied privately with several painters before finding her direction with the Impressionists.
Her subject was women and children in domestic settings: mothers bathing infants, women reading, girls at the opera, women having tea. The subject matter sounds conventional. The treatment is not. She observed her subjects with the same unsentimental attention Degas brought to dancers. The compositions are cropped and angled, influenced by Japanese prints and by Degas's habit of painting people from unexpected viewpoints. Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878) shows a child sprawled across a chair with the boredom and physical abandon that adults rarely notice and painters rarely record.
She never married. She was wealthy enough not to need to sell her work. She used her position and her connections to persuade American collectors, particularly the Havemeyers, to buy Impressionist paintings. The Havemeyer collection, much of it acquired on Cassatt's advice, was donated to the Metropolitan Museum. She shaped the taste of American collectors more than any other single individual.
She developed cataracts and was nearly blind by 1914. She stopped painting. She died in 1926, at eighty-two.
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