Famous work · not an exact-location map point
Five O'Clock Tea
Two women taking afternoon tea in a Paris drawing room, a gleaming silver service between them — Mary Cassatt's own domestic world.
No single real-world viewpoint
A domestic interior with two figures; no depicted real place — the coordinate is the whole city of Paris.
Five O'Clock Tea — at a glance
- Artist
- Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
- Year
- 1880
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Place
- The Cassatt family's drawing room, Paris
- Viewpoint
- A specific private interior — the striped sofa and family silver recur in other pictures; not a public site
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 65 × 92 cm
- Now at
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Overview
Five O'Clock Tea is one of Mary Cassatt's Paris interiors, painted in 1880, the year after she began exhibiting with the Impressionists. On a striped sofa, a woman in a pink day dress sits stiffly at the left; a visitor at the right, still in her bonnet, raises a teacup to her face; on a low table between them, a large ornate silver tea service on a tray. Patterned wallpaper, a marble mantel, a gilt-framed picture behind. It is oil on canvas, about 65 by 92 cm, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Where was Five O'Clock Tea painted?
Scholarship Cassatt, an American, lived in Paris, and from 1877 her parents and her sister Lydia joined her; they took an apartment together. The setting is that family drawing room — the striped sofa, the panelled wall, the mantelpiece and the inherited silver tea service (a Cassatt family piece) recur in other pictures. It is an intimate, specific domestic interior rather than a public or identifiable site; the apartment no longer functions as it did.
What is in the painting?
The two women fill the left and centre on the striped sofa; the seated one is Lydia, the visitor beside her holds her cup up so it half-hides her face. The big silver teapot, kettle-on-stand, sugar bowl and tray dominate the low table in front. Behind, striped-and-flowered wallpaper, a veined marble mantel with a Chinese jar, and a framed painting. The colour is warm — pinks, creams, the flash of silver.
Look closely
The silver tea service
A large ornate teapot, kettle-on-stand, sugar bowl and tray — an inherited Cassatt family piece — dominate the low table.
The raised cup
The visitor holds her teacup up so it covers her mouth — the picture's off-guard moment.
The striped sofa
A striped upholstered sofa that appears in several of Cassatt's family interiors.
The mantel and jar
A veined marble mantelpiece with a Chinese jar and a framed picture behind the women.
Analysis
Composition and technique
Two seated women pushed to one side, the silver service given the foreground, the pose slightly awkward and unposed.
Scholarship Cassatt crops in close, sets the figures off-centre and lets the elaborate tea service take the front of the picture, catching the visitor mid-sip so the cup covers her mouth — an off-guard, modern-life moment rather than a formal group. The brushwork is broad and the light indoor and even.
History & provenance
The painting is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Sources
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — collection entry for Mary Cassatt, ‘Five O'Clock Tea’ (1880)
- Judith A. Barter (ed.), ‘Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman’ (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998)
