The Loge 1880

Mary Cassatt, an American artist working in France, painted ‘The Loge’ using oil on canvas. It depicts two young women at the opera. The institution of the opera was central to the social rituals of 19th-century bourgeois society and Cassatt makes it clear that these rituals were gendered. Women were placed on display as much as they were there to see the show. The composition encourages us to consider the act of looking, and who has the power to look at whom. Cassatt, as a woman, was excluded from many of the artistic institutions that shaped the art world. Yet here, she inserts herself into one of the most hallowed spaces of high culture. This image can be read in relation to the broader social and political contexts of its time. Art historians draw upon a wide range of sources – from letters and diaries to exhibition reviews – to illuminate the meaning of an artwork like this.