Portrait of a Lady by Cassatt, Mary

Mary Cassatt's "Portrait of a Lady," painted around 1887, is an oil on canvas by the only American artist ever invited to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Cassatt spent most of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and built a career painting the private lives of women with unflinching honesty. Her subject here is an older woman, painted not with flattery but with quiet, luminous respect.

You can see Cassatt's training in the face: the skin is softly modeled, the eyes hold a composed inwardness, and the silvery white hair is the brightest passage on the canvas. All the compositional weight, the dark coat, the strong hat brim, the spare background, pushes your attention there. This is a painter who knew exactly where she wanted you to look.

Now look at the right edge. Behind the sitter, the back of her chair is covered in a bold red and pink floral pattern. Where the face is careful and built, the chair is fast, loose, and almost abstract. Cassatt laid in those blossoms with quick, confident strokes that barely resolve into flowers at all. It's a hidden exhibition of pure impressionist technique, tucked into the corner of a formal portrait.

The painting holds two speeds at once: the deliberate, tender attention of a portraitist and the darting, energetic eye of an avant-garde painter who ran with Degas. Next time you see a Cassatt mother-and-child, check the wallpaper or the upholstery, she often hid her wildest brushwork just out of frame.