The artistic collaboration between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt is revealed through close examination of Cassatt’s beloved painting Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878) from the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Prompted by a rare letter from Cassatt to her dealer, Ambroise Vollard, referencing Degas’s work on this painting, Gallery associate curator Kimberly A. Jones and senior paintings conservator Ann Hoenigswald spent years researching and examining the painting, on the hunt for Degas’s contribution. In this short film, Jones and Hoenigswald shed light on their detective work and
discoveries.