According to Old Masters specialist Mercè Valderrey Art and the Athena Art Foundation, the participation of women artists at this year’s edition of TEFAF has “nearly doubled” compared to 2024: More than 500 works by women artists are exhibited by almost 100 booths at the fair. While this is still less than half of the exhibitors at the fair, it does nonetheless yield some exceptional highlights. Among them is this pastel-on-board work by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, Girl with a Banjo (1894).
This tender work showcases Cassatt’s mastery of pastels, which she was encouraged to use by her friend Edgar Degas in the 1880s. By the 1890s, Cassatt had established herself as one of the foremost American women artists. This work encapsulates the artist’s enduring and touching focus on the lives of women, often in domestic and everyday settings.
“It’s so skillfully rendered and so delicate and so sensitive, but I also interpret it as truly kind of an early feminist artwork which makes it particularly special,” said Rebecca Rau, vice president of acquisitions at M.S. Rau. “The scale and refinement and the palette are so unique and so specific. I love these really warm, deep kind of burnt sienna, burnt umber hues that I don’t often associate with her.”
The work, which is priced at €4.5 million ($4.88 million), is one of a cluster of hefty artworks at the New Orleans gallery’s booth. Works by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet are among those on view here.
