Blue Armchair

A small girl lies sprawled across an oversized blue armchair, one arm tossed behind her head and her legs kicked out in a pose that practically screams childhood restlessness. Her face carries that unmistakable look of a kid stuck indoors with nothing to do, somewhere between boredom and drifting off into her own thoughts. Mary Cassatt painted this scene in 1878, calling it "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair," and she skipped all the fussy formality that usually went into portraits of children back then. The result feels refreshingly real, like a moment caught rather than staged.

Cassatt was an American who made her home in Paris and fell in with the Impressionists, striking up a lasting friendship with Edgar Degas. He even lent a hand with the background of this particular painting. His influence shows up in the quick, energetic brushstrokes across those bright blue chairs and in the little dog dozing peacefully on the left. The whole room seems to tip forward at a strange angle, pulling us straight into the child's cozy corner of the world.

The girl was actually the daughter of one of Degas's friends, which explains why the scene feels so relaxed and unrehearsed. Oddly enough, a major Paris exhibition turned the painting down in 1878, a decision that reveals more about the timid tastes of the era than any fault in the work. Its plain, unpolished honesty is exactly what gives it staying power.