Mary Cassatt's Profile of a Seated Woman Sewing does not appear to have served as a
study for a particular oil painting or pastel. Rather, both the recto and verso images
belong to a more general moment when the artist had turned to watercolor as a means of
exploring variations in composition and color. While Cassatt had experimented briefly
with the medium during her Impressionist period, she used it regularly only during the
years from around 1907 to 1910.


In a number of these later watercolors, Cassatt was especially interested in the
relationship of her figures to the verdant landscapes visible behind them. This is the case
with the recto image of Profile of a Seated Woman Sewing, in which the woman bends
over her needlework in front of greenery visible through what might be an open French
window. In the larger and more finished works that relate to this watercolor, such as the
painting Augusta Sewing Before a Window (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
(Fig. 1) and the pastel Sewing in the Conservatory (private collection)(Fig. 2), the foliage
has been contained behind a smaller and higher window and given less importance in
the composition. The painterly freedom and fresh coloration of the watercolor washes
that comprise the landscape in Profile of a Seated Woman Sewing give the work more of
a plein air atmosphere, a feeling that the picture was created on the spot during a
summer's day at Cassatt's château in the countryside near Paris. This picture gains
added interest with the existence of a recto image, in which the artist's concern seems to
have been the sitter's pose and the blue tones of her dress.