Woman in Black at the Opera ~ Mary Cassatt

Location : Museum of Fine Arts, USA
Year : 1880 Oil on Canvas
One popular Parisian past time was going to the theatre where the fashionable audiences' interest in viewing people was bigger than the peformances on the stage. Like scientist studying human behaviour, Cassatt recorded what she saw at the opera and turned it into a painting. The colour black that makes she looks elegant, really draws the attention to the woman who focusses her attention using her opera glasses on someone out of the frame, without knowing that she herself is veiwed by a man at other box, while we - the viewer - watches the two of them. In this painting, I see that there's a sense of feminism in it, a girl power that shows in the way she poses. Holding her fan and opera glasses she seems to have this power and charisma on her, and it looks like she's determined to have what she wants. For more details, click this for full image