Friday Focus - Mary Cassatt in Print: Degas's 'Mary Cassatt at the Louvre' Etching
Friday Focus is an online talks series hosted by The Hunterian, where we share a deeper insight into our exhibitions and collections, research and work going on behind the scenes. Celebrating the centenary of Mary Cassatt’s death, this talk will explore Edgar Degas’s fascinating double portrait of Mary and her sister Lydia, a treasure of The Hunterian print collection.
Date: Friday 10 July 2026
Time: 13:00 - 13:30
Venue: Online
Category: Public lectures, Hunterian
Speaker: Professor Clare A.P. Willsdon
Join the American artist Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia as they visit the Louvre – and watch their French colleague Edgar Degas watching them there!
Celebrating the centenary of Cassatt’s death, this talk will explore Degas’s fascinating double portrait of Mary and Lydia, a treasure of The Hunterian print collection, that shows Mary from the back, as she contemplates an ancient Etruscan sarcophagus in the Louvre’s antiquity galleries. Since the sarcophagus portrays a married couple, Degas’s evocative image has been interpreted as a reflection of his own interest in marriage at this time, and as a potentially negative comment on women as connoisseurs of art. But Mary Cassatt was a special and daring woman, a fellow Impressionist artist whom Degas greatly admired. How far might we see his portrait, with its intriguing composition and innovative use of the etching medium, as a tribute to Mary’s proud independence of eye and mind?
Join Professor Clare A.P. Willsdon in this talk, exploring how Degas made his Mary Cassatt print, what people knew about the Etruscans in the nineteenth century, and how all this might allow us to see both Degas and Cassatt in a new light; one that speaks powerfully to our own concerns today with gender equality.
Image: Edgar Degas, 'Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery', 1879-80.
About Friday Focus
Friday Focus is an online talks series hosted by The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Each session features a different speaker, sharing a deeper insight into our exhibitions and collections, research and work going on behind the scenes at The Hunterian.
The talks take place at 1pm and are 25 minutes long with time for questions afterwards. Recordings of the sessions will be made available on our YouTube channel.