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COLOUR STUDY

Colour palette

  • #92846A
  • #6C6351
  • #9B8D72
  • #A69579
  • #A19074
  • #C2BAA4

Approximate colour proportions

  • #92846A23.2%
  • #6C635119.0%
  • #9B8D7217.9%
  • #A6957917.3%
  • #A1907413.3%
  • #C2BAA49.3%

Estimated from six colour groups in the museum image, including visible paper or borders. Reproduction and lighting affect the result; these are image-area proportions, not pigment measurements.

Bequest of Muriel Butkin · The Cleveland Museum of Art
Image licence: CC0 · Museum record & image source ↗

America · c. 1889

After-Dinner Coffee (recto)

Mary Cassatt

Date
c. 1889
Medium
graphite
Dimensions
Sheet: 20 x 14 cm (7 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Country / context
United States
Movement / tradition
European and American art
Collection
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Attribution / role
Museum attribution
Pathway
European and American art ↗
FROM THE MUSEUM

Cassatt exhibited prints for the first time in 1880 at the fifth Impressionist exhibition. As the decade progressed, she continued to show her graphic work alongside pastels and paintings. In the spring of 1890, at the Deuxième Exposition de Peintres-Graveurs, she showed a group of drypoints, remarkable in their delicacy and precision, as well as a group of prints made with a combination of aquatint and softground etching that appeared quickly drawn and spontaneous. After-Dinner Coffee is a study for a softground etching with aquatint.

Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0

Place in the artist’s career

The graphite study, colour print In the Omnibus and later pastel After the Bath show three ways to organise intimate encounters. Compare line against broad colour areas and the softer or more broken texture of pastel. The shift in medium changes surface and reproducibility, not simply the emotional seriousness of the subject.

The artist’s practice

Artist-wide context; individual works may differ.

Media and surface

Graphite, colour intaglio prints and pastel create sharply different textures and degrees of reproducibility.

Marks and structure

Strong cropping and clear contours organise intimate relationships without elaborate narrative scenery.

Palette and light

Broad colour areas and patterned surfaces coexist with the softer, broken colour of pastel.

Explore the artist’s life and works ↗
A MOMENT TO LOOK

Start with what you can see: shapes, surface, colour and scale. How might the listed materials affect the way this object was made and experienced?

Looking prompt · an invitation to observe, not a historical interpretation.
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Follow a connection.

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