1889
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
After-Dinner Coffee (recto); After-Dinner Coffee (verso) is a 1889 by Mary Cassatt, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a woman in a fancy dress sipping coffee after dinner, her cup held just right. The room glows with soft light, but the real surprise is the print technique. Cassatt used drypoint—scratching lines into a metal plate—then covered it with ink and pressed paper against it. The lines stay delicate and precise. Most Impressionists painted outdoors or in cafés. Cassatt focused on quiet home moments like this. The print looks both careful and quick, like a sketch that wasn’t erased. Her prints remind me of Rembrandt’s etchings.
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.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker.
See the richer artist page
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