Spring: Margot Standing in a Garden (Fillette dans un jardin)

Mary Cassatt

Oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art

In this intimate oil painting, Mary Cassatt depicts Margot Lux, a young girl from the village near the artist's country home in France, standing in a garden in her finery—a red dress, pale drapery, and a wide-brimmed hat adorned with flowers. The composition exemplifies Cassatt's mature Impressionist style, characterized by a high-keyed palette, simplified forms, and loose, expressive brushwork that animates both figure and setting with warmth and spontaneity. Cassatt, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, spent most of her adult life in France and became the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists, distinguishing herself through her perceptive portrayals of women and children in everyday life. This work belongs to a celebrated series of paintings featuring Margot Lux as model—a child who sat for Cassatt in nearly fifty known works—reflecting the artist's sustained engagement with childhood as a subject in the years around 1900.