Mary Cassatt’s sister Lydia sat for The Cup of Tea in 1881. She exhibited the work in the Salon’s Impressionist exhibition the same year.
From the Met:
Taking afternoon tea was a social ritual for many upper-middle-class women. Committed to portraying the ordinary events of everyday life, the artist made that ritual the subject of a series of works painted around 1880, when she had been living abroad for the better part of a decade.
…oh, I get it. Tea’s like nineteenth-century SoulCycle.
