In the Loge

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, raised near Pittsburgh and first trained as a painter in Philadelphia, became nineteenth-century America’s most modern painter. Like many of her contemporaries, Cassatt felt that her artistic education in the United States was inadequate, and she traveled to Europe soon after the Civil War. She studied in both Italy and France, and by 1873 she had made Paris her home. In late nineteenth century Paris, everyone went to the Opera. It was the place to see and be seen. Women, knowing they were there to be looked at, would wear lots of jewelry and dresses that showed the appropriate amount of skin. Men would wear black to disappear within the loge (opera box) so they could look without being seen. The view of the stage from a loge was actually not very good because people came to look at each other and often ignored the performance completely. Because the Opera was a symbol of Modernity, it became the subject of a number of Impressionist paintings. The Opera was an important space for women artists like Mary Cassatt because they were able to gain access to this space whereas other public areas were unavailable to them.